Undisclosed Desires
by HediTwiHard
Summary: With no sign of the Cullen's return, Victoria decides to exact her revenge on the coven, beginning with the human girl they left behind. Bella, despite her fears, is determined to take the path of least destruction. But when it comes to vampires, that's easier said than done, and soon an unexpected attraction takes hold. Canon-based NM AU.
1. Close Encounter

_Author's note: This idea for a Bella/Edward/Victoria story has been brewing inside my brain for a while. I've affectionately nicknamed it my BEV project._ _I have a strong idea of how this story is going to progress, though I have left the summary vague enough to give me some room to work with in case it develops differently._

 _Thanks ahead of time for reading._

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Chapter 1: Close Encounter

 _"Can't you take a hint or are you just trying to annoy me? Bella, we can't be friends anymore. Got it?"_

 _"Why won't you listen? Stop calling."_

 _"Don't say that. You don't need me. You never even wanted my friendship. You just used me to get Charlie off your back._

 _"I don't get it._ _Why can't you move on from those filthy bloodsuckers? All they've done is keep you from living your life!_

 _"J_ _ust don't make this any harder than it already is. Don't call again."_

Bella was glad that she was already sitting at the edge of her bed, or else she would've collapsed in a clumsy heap to the floor.

Over a series of terse phone calls not only had Jacob called Bella out on her bullshit, as he would say, he had also insulted the very people that had changed her life and given it meaning.

The slur reverberated in her mind long after he slammed his phone into the receiver. Not the Cullens, not _them_. But bloodsuckers, filthy bloodsuckers.

She stared down at her cellphone in disbelief, struggling to reconcile the warm, always-cheerful Jacob with those harsh words.

His easygoing nature was what had brought them together in the first place. Always optimistic—even when he fumed about Sam and his gang, which he frequently referred to as _those SHITS_ (Stupid Humongous Idiots Trolling Shit), a terrible joke that deducted a couple years off his thirty-three—he distracted Bella from her pain.

He always knew what to say and what not to say around her.

It seemed he also knew exactly how to break her.

Her sun had been eclipsed by an unknown darkness, and it left her feeling chilled to the bone. She shouldn't hurt this bad, she knew, but she had been using him as a crutch for far too long that naturally she had grown used to his company. Dependent on it, even.

After hearing those hurtful words, there was also fear that he had somehow confirmed the legend of the Cold Ones. Why else would someone call another person a _bloodsucker_?

Realizing this was impossible, the fear assuaged to a familiar frustration: the slur was meant to demean her. Like everyone else, Jacob probably thought she was pathetically caught up in the Cullen's allure, with their mystical beauty and deep pockets. Only he probably saw her devotion to them as the result of some cultish obsession with the supernatural. He was probably kicking himself for telling her the legend in the first place, not that he'd believed it.

It was true that Bella had used Jacob to appease Charlie. After Sam had found her in a catatonic state in the woods _that_ night, and she'd realized that Charlie had gotten the whole town involved to investigate her disappearance, Bella vowed to resume normality for both her and Charlie's sake. She kept her grades high and occasionally hung out with her friends, even going as far as planning outings with them to stay occupied. She talked, she laughed, she smiled. This was what people saw. And they truly believed she had moved on. Despite her best efforts, however, she still felt different from when she'd first arrived to Forks.

After they'd all left, Bella struggled. Each day would bleed into the next, tedious and unexciting, and sometimes she'd find herself standing in front of the stove, cooking steaks and potatoes, and realize that she couldn't remember going to school that day at all. But like the Cullens, she decided to move past the bad and assimilate to human life, although never quite feeling at peace.

The crushing end to the last vestiges of her friendship with Jake brought on a wave of concern. She wondered if Charlie was just as unconvinced by her act.

She gripped the bed covers with white-blotched fists, tears escaping the corners of her eyes. She quickly focused on her breathing, seeking to smother out the short, licking flames of shame that threatened to grow.

 _Inhale, exhale_. A flash of Charlie's smile. His taciturn nods of approval whenever she'd declare that she'd be going out with friends. _Inhale, exhale_. She wiped her tears, eager to wave it all behind.

 _There's no way Charlie suspects anything. And if he does, there's nothing for him to call me out on. At least nothing he knows about. Not the motorcycles, the fake ID, or the deep-rooted pain..._

With those thoughts, Bella quickly shrugged on a weatherproof jacket, checking to make sure her keys were inside one of the pockets. She also grabbed her cellphone off the bed, texting Mike that she wouldn't be able to join their friends at La Push for their semi-ritual Saturday night gatherings. Charlie was in the living room, intently watching a basketball game on the TV. March Madness in full swing.

Bella announced she was going to First Beach without expecting much of a response, so she couldn't stop the flash of annoyance that coursed through her when he called her over. As Charlie paused the TV, she became nervous.

"Yeah, Dad?"

"You're going to La Push. Does that mean you fixed things up with Jake?"

Bella fidgeted.

She really wished Charlie hadn't found out about their fight, but Jake's angry tirade, not dissimilar to the ones on the phone, had called Billy and Charlie's attention over to the rusty garage, where she stood frozen in fear as she watched Jake destroy the motorcycles they (mostly him) had worked so hard to fix, ranting about how she could care less about him even though he was doing her a favor and earnestly trying to be her friend despite her antisocial behavior. Sweat had beaded across his russet skin and his body had shook with rage. Days after, she'd called him to apologize for being a terrible friend, but Billy had answered the phone, telling her he was sick with a nasty flu. A week later Billy was still telling her that he was too ill to see her. Until these phone calls, she hadn't believed otherwise. But now she new their friendship was irreparable.

"No. I'm just meeting up with some friends from school."

"Is he still sick?"

"He was never sick, Dad. It was just... a really big fight."

"What were you guys fighting about?"

"I'd rather not go into it."

"I don't understand. I really thought you kiddos were getting along."

His words made her feel guilty for not sharing Jake's amorous feelings. Her life would be simpler if she did, and it would certainly make Charlie happy. Being friends with him was second best. However, she was sure the only way to get back on Jake's good grace was to proclaim her love for him, and she was neither capable of falling in love with anyone other than Edward nor that good an actress.

"We _were_ getting along," she relented, emphasizing the past tense, "It's... complicated."

Charlie stared at her a few beats before clearing his throat. "Alright, Bells. Sorry for the third degree. Go. Have some fun."

Bella's shoulders sagged with relief and she promptly left the house, conscious of the fact that Charlie kept watching her on the way out.

Closing the front door behind her, she cursed the dark clouds above. Spring in Forks, if there was such a thing. The weather forecast had predicted sunshine, but she has experienced nothing but misery so far and that didn't seem likely to change.

Her rusty red pickup rumbled to life and the monstrous vibrations followed her all the way to the Cullen house, where she'd often go at times she wanted to be alone.

The abrupt, unpaved turn that led to their house was marked by a tall, skinny tree bearing her carved initials: IMS. It made it easier to spot amidst the months' worth of overgrowth. She had spent the better part of an hour cutting into the tree with a dull pocketknife she'd fished from the center console, her hands sticky with blood and tree sap because her sawing motions had become brash and her eyes had clouded over with tears until everything oozed into one hazy, sticky blur.

 _Even if the blood disappears a long time before the Cullens come back_ , she'd thought, _they won't be able to miss it. They won't be able to forget me, just as I haven't been able to forget about them_.

The first time she had gathered the courage to return, she'd stayed inside the truck, driving away less than a minute later. Gazing at the hard steel and wide glass structure, she had wondered what she would find inside. She couldn't decide what would be better: Seeing that they'd left everything behind or that they had taken everything with them. The former would confirm that they were able to easily move on, while the latter would mean that Edward had kept his promise, that it would be as if they'd never existed. Even when the former turned out to be true, with the exception of some objects from Carlisle's office (the incriminating ones), she refused to read too much into it. Instead, she took it as an opportunity, a home away from home, where she was free from wandering eyes and inquisitive conversation.

Months later, parking in front of their garage, Bella entered their house without much forethought.

Without any running water or electricity in the house, there wasn't much for her to do there. Most of the time, she slept on their beds, inhaling the remnants of their sweet scent. Occasionally, she would clean around the house, rake the leaves and take care of the flower beds, as she imagined Esme often did while Carlisle was working in the hospital and her kids—adopted, as the story went—were at school. Whenever she felt adventurous, Bella would go on a hike or sit atop a tree branch overlooking the river and nearby mountains. But today she felt particularly glum.

Grabbing a beer from the kitchen, which she'd purchased with a fake ID and kept stockpiles of for her friend's parties, Bella sat at the kitchen island, taking absentminded sips.

A couple months ago, one sip of cheap bear was enough to put her off taking any more. The acrid taste burned all the way down her throat and left a strong after-taste. Now, it took a half-dozen before she decided it was best to stop. Not that she had become a drinker. As Jessica had once remarked, she was just "a little more fun."

Right now, she considered getting drunk. Anything to get her mind off the phone calls and unwind her tensed muscles. It felt like every day was a reminder of how she wasn't enough for anyone. Not her parents, not the Cullens, not Jake... She dispelled the thought with a large gulp. It was dangerous to entertain the idea with a kitchen fully stocked with alcohol and no one around to talk her out of acting carelessly.

It would be safer to just sleep it off. But her earlier upset kept her blood fizzing under her skin, so taking a long nap seemed out of the question. She tossed the empty bottle into the garbage. It clanged to the bottom of the bin.

A sudden crash and clamor from somewhere upstairs reverberated throughout the whole house, startling Bella from her stupor. Could she dare hope?

"Who's there?"

Silence.

Although Bella was sure she wasn't formidable enough to stand against anyone, even a stray animal, she gingerly climbed the stairwell to find the source of the ruckus.

Walking over to a pile of broken glass and crushed flowers and the overturned hall table, she glanced around, noting that from there she would have been able to see herself in the kitchen.

"Hello?" she called out in a voice that betrayed her fear.

She glanced around in a cautious manner. There was no trace of an intruder, no dirt tracks or other misplaced furnishings, yet she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching her. She tried burying her hopes, determined for it to be nothing more than a passing emotion, unnamed and unrecognized in her mind.

She crept down the stairs and returned with a broom and dustpan from the kitchen to clean up the mess. She made more noise than usual to break the eerie silence. After she'd disposed of the trash, she dismissed the event with a sigh.

The uneasiness lingered, however, so Bella decided to go outside.

For months she'd maintained the outdoor pool and it had never looked as inviting as it did now, with the sun beating down on it and the shimmering water casting bright white flakes of light across the floor like spilt glitter.

The danger forgotten, she smiled up at the sun. Its fortuitous appearance serving to lift her spirits. Standing still, she felt the warmth spill over her like a blanket. She slipped off her jacket and her pants but otherwise kept her black shirt on. Goosebumps formed on her exposed legs as the cold breeze persisted.

The water was very cold, but she nonetheless waded into the pool. Her legs disappeared underwater, then her waist, to her neck. She stuck to the edge of the pool, gripping the wall as she floated at the surface. The heat on her face was soothing and she simply relaxed, kicking her legs lightly.

A half hour later, she felt a sudden chill and she realized the clouds had hidden the sun. She decided to swim a few laps to get her body heat back. When that didn't work, she swam to the bottom of the pool, holding onto the bottom rung of the ladder as she held her breath for as long as she could before resurfacing.

After some time doing this, she decided it was best to get out of the pool. She rung her shirt dry the best she could and quickly ran to one of the bathrooms on the second floor to get hold of a towel, feeling the brunt of the cold wind on her exposed skin. A trail of wet foot prints were created in her wake. She grabbed a black shirt, similar to the one she had been wearing, from Alice's bedroom closet and quickly changed into it.

Realizing she'd left her jeans and jacket outside, Bella walked back out, only to realize that she wasn't alone.

Victoria was holding Bella's clothes to her nose like a bouquet, sniffing it as if she were alone and hadn't just heard Bella jogging back to the pool area.

In that instant, Bella felt utterly cold. Her blood froze in metallic terror. She was conscious of the fact that she had no pants on and that her dark hair hung in damp dreads down to her waist. It made her feel doubly vulnerable as Victoria's eyes slowly shifted to hers. It was the languid gaze of a sun-bathing kitten. She noticed Victoria's eyes were bright red, meaning she'd fed recently, but the thought wasn't reassuring in the least.

Satiated, Victoria's likely mission of vengeance would be unencumbered by insatiable, sloppy thirst. She would be purposeful. Capable of dragging out her death, just as James had intended.

Victoria's expression was unrecognizable. No lioness sneer, no threatening smirk. She was as frozen and captivating as a statue of a Greek goddess. A nymph in the flesh, with leaves entangled in her wavy red hair and nimble feet exposed to dirt and air.

Even though Bella knew escape was futile, she found herself stumbling back.

When Victoria hadn't taken a step towards her, Bella quickly turned and sprinted across the foyer. Before she could reach the front door, she felt herself trip on something stone firm. Victoria's foot. With quick realization, Bella tried scuttling away on her forearms and toes.

Still, Victoria managed to grab hold of Bella's hair, halting her futile attempt at escape and forcing a pained cry from her throat, and slammed her face down on the floor. The impact created a resounding _thwack_. Bella released a clipped groan at the pain. One hand fumbled over Victoria's, even though she knew she didn't have the strength to pry herself away from her tight grasp. Without a word, Victoria slammed her head down again, which stunned Bella into inaction. She let out a meek whimper as Victoria straddled her back and stooped down to nuzzle her throat, inhaling her sublime floral scent. When Bella realized that the wetness trickling down her nose and smearing on her cheek was blood, she clenched her eyes shut.

She shook hard, anticipating another hard blow or the painful injection of venom.

Victoria yanked harder on her hair before letting the weight of her skull drop her stinging head against the cold floor.

Bella gasped at the sharp pain but otherwise kept still. This was the beginning of the end. She could feel it as surely as the wooden floorboards beneath her.

A cold breeze whipped across Bella's back and her muscles coiled tighter in response. Nothing. Seconds passed in silence.

After a while, Bella realized that she was alone. Disbelieving of the attack's passing, she scrambled to her feet, quickly dressing in the clothes she found laying in a heap beside her, and ran to her car without bothering to lock up. Her truck was undisturbed, though the instant she registered that fact she realized that Victoria could have easily tipped it over or flattened the tires to prevent her escape.

For some reason, Victoria was letting her go.

Bella revved the truck's engine, as if pumping it with her own adrenaline, and drove as fast as she could, making flitting glances down the seemingly never-ending tarmac strip and the suddenly formidable forest that encroached on both sides.

It wasn't until she'd parked in front of her own house that Bella felt some semblance of calm. As far as she could tell, Victoria hadn't followed her.

Suddenly, she remembered Charlie. She rushed into the house, fumbling with the locks, her heart dropping low in her chest when she didn't find him in the living room. "Dad?" she called. Bella started checking every room, despite fearing what she might discover. "Dad?" The word dragged itself out, carrying her fearful tone. Once she'd gone through the whole house, she grabbed her cell and rang Charlie. _Could he have been called to the station?_

"Please pick up, please pick up," she muttered.

As soon as she heard Charlie answer, she was overcome with relief. A sob escaped her tight throat.

Charlie, catching onto her fear, asked, "Bella, are you okay? Are you safe? Where are you?"

Bella backpedaled. "No, no. I'm fine. I'm home. I thought—when I didn't find you, I—." She couldn't think of what to say.

Charlie spoke slowly, the way one does with a trauma victim, "Everything's okay, Bells. I'm fine. I'm sorry your party ended the way it did. Now—"

"What?"

"It's okay. I'm sorry I couldn't wait for you at home but I got called up to the station. Your friends already came to inform us about the bear. They're alright. The ranger tells me that there's been other sightings about a mile out of town. The tracks are inconsistent with those of a bear, though just as big, so do me a favor and stay home. Don't go into the woods until we have this handled."

Bella remained silent, as she struggled to connect the significance of the bears with Victoria's appearance. Is it possible Victoria had been mistaken for a bear? It couldn't be. Otherwise, there would've been mention of fiery red hair. Nothing was adding up. Almost instantly, she felt foolish. _Of course, they aren't connected. The world isn't conspiring against you_.

"Bella, you there?"

She cleared her throat, but her voice was still a whisper. "Yes, I'm here."

"Stay home, okay. I'll be back in a couple hours. Don't worry about dinner. We'll go out to the diner once I get back. That sound good?"

"Yeah, okay," she murmured.

"Bye, kiddo."

Now that the adrenaline had passed, Bella felt weary. The endorphins had dissipated to reveal an agonizing headache pounding its way to the forefront as if it were a drum. Bella grabbed a couple of pain killers and washed them down with some water.

As much as she wanted to sleep, Bella forced herself to analyze what had happened over at the Cullen's house. Fact: She was attacked by Victoria. Fact: It was her fault Victoria's mate was dead. Fact: She was left alive. Victoria hadn't killed her. And this was where everything became confusing. Why did Victoria let her go? Why knock over the hall table and sniff her clothes, only to disappear like a ghostly apparition?

When James had sought her out last spring, he didn't pay mind to the dangers of his beloved blood sport: incurring the wrath of a large coven, risking the exposure of vampires, and dividing his coven. His only purpose was to win at his own game. His wasn't a tale of vengeance or redemption. He was a vampire and he lived for the hunt. A predator, first and foremost. Victoria was his mate, which meant it was entirely plausible that she was just as vain and malevolent as James. Although she had a feeling that what Victoria desired above dinner-and-a-show was revenge for her lost love.

Bella gulped at the idea of Victoria seeking revenge on her. Of Victoria tracking her movements, teasing Bella of her presence, drawing out the suspense. Of Victoria slamming her fragile body into walls and crushing her bones until she was pulverized remains. Of biting her and forcing her to endure agonizing pain before ending her life. Or worse, killing someone she loved.

She wasn't sure if there was any way out of this. She couldn't go to the cops with this story, or anyone for that matter. They wouldn't believe her, and if they did, they were just as vulnerable as she was. Human prey.

No bullet, no blade, no wooden stake would work as defense. Except, there was something she could use, if Victoria got close again: Fire.

Bella scourged the closets and drawers for flammable aerosol spray cans and lighters. She shoved hairspray and a kitchen lighter into her backpack, in case Victoria came back to her while she was away from home. (A blowtorch would be better, but that would just raise questions from Mike and his parents, who owned the store where she worked.) Despite this measure, Bella felt ill-equipped to the task. The idea of harming another person, killing them, even if that someone was a vampire, was abhorrent to her.

Ashamed of her fear to defend herself, Bella crawled onto the center of her bed. She closed her eyes and succumbed to exhaustion and ibuprofen.

She did not notice Victoria perched on a tree branch outside her window, her clothes torn and dirty and her red hair in disarray. Nor could she tell that Victoria's emotions were just as tumultuous as her appearance. She wanted to kill Bella and be done with it, so she could continue to mourn her fallen mate. She wanted to drag out Bella's pain, break her psyche and her endearingly breakable body. But as she watched Bella's sleeping body, she realized she'd made one big mistake: She should have killed her the moment the Cullen's left. When she was at her most vulnerable and pathetic state. Because the truth was Victoria found herself growing attached to the human.

Victoria could envision how this would end. With Bella in chains in the Cullen's basement, thoroughly deprived and debased, begging for death, until she had no choice but to oblige, and holding the cold husk of Bella's naked body, grew resentful of the fact that Bella had gotten what she wanted while she remained doomed to an eternity of loneliness. Without game, without James, she was nothing. _Such a terrible fate awaits me. God knows what'll become of me when everyone responsible is dead and I'm left on this earth none the better than this pathetic human girl_ , she lamented.

Her brooding ceased when she heard the cruiser pull up in front of the house, the wheels fitting right over the dirt tracks on the yard beside Bella's truck. She watched as Charlie walked up to the house in the dark. Listened as he put up his gun belt by the door and trudged up the stairs. Bella was still asleep, oblivious to their presence, curled on her side with blood smears under her nose and shoes caked in mud hanging off the bed.

From the window, she could see Charlie standing at the threshold of Bella's room, debating whether or not to wake her up. Some deep emotion crossed his face when he caught sight of the crusted blood, inflamed nose, and bruised eyes. He sat down on the edge of her bed, rubbing her calves with one stout hand. "Bells?"

Immediately, Bella stirred. Her eyes fluttered opened. Recollecting the past hours' events, or rather its flavor, she clasped her hand tightly around Charlie's.

At this sign of affection, Charlie was overcome with love and concern for his daughter. He stared into her drowsy raccoon eyes. Knowing how clumsy she was, Bella probably ran into a tree or tripped on uneven ground when running away from the black bear—wolf, if the other reported sightings and odd tracks were anything to go by—that had chased them out of the forest adjacent to the beach. Suddenly, he felt bad about the pressure he'd been putting on her to fix things with Jake.

In the silence, Bella reached for her nose, aware that Charlie's eyes hadn't left her face. Feeling around, she was glad she'd taken the pain killers. It made the pain bearable.

Charlie patted her leg. "You're nose doesn't look broken. But you definitely need some ice. I'll get you some ibuprofen."

Bella nodded. Once he reached downstairs, Bella plodded over to the shared bathroom and stared into the mirror with a grimace. She looked like shit. Her hair was a bird's nest. Her sallow, translucent skin was marred by blotches of purple and green. Her nose was swollen to almost twice its normal size. Not to mention her damp bra and underwear were making her skin itch. She quickly undressed and stepped into the shower, pulling the shower curtain closed behind her. When the shower-head turned on, Victoria felt inclined to wreak more mischief. She climbed into Bella's bedroom through the window.

Sauntering over to the bathroom, Victoria caught a glimpse of Charlie fumbling around downstairs in the medicine cabinet. She couldn't help but think that Bella and Charlie were both coordinately-challenged. Like father, like daughter.

The bathroom was misty and warm from the hot shower, spreading Bella's scent throughout the small space. It made Victoria's mouth water with venom. Giving a fleeting glance at Bella's silhouette, she walked up to the bathroom sink and spied its contents. She picked up a purple hairbrush and daintily picked at the strands of brown hair trapped around the bristles.

She glanced at herself in the mirror. Turning around to lean back against the sink, she singled out Bella's shadow as she brushed her own hair. Bella was currently soaping up her shoulders, having already taken care of her hair. She scrubbed up and down her thin legs before finishing up with a single brush between her legs, then she simply stood under the shower-head, enjoying the feel of warm water raining down on her clean skin.

 _What would she do_ , Victoria wondered, _if I slipped into the shower with her? Would she have time enough to react before I slammed her into the tile wall? Would she break her head on the tub before I've had my fun? What would I do to her father if he came to investigate the loud sound and discovered Bella's limp body in my arms, her eyes glazed over with death?_

Sensing that Bella was almost finished, Victoria untangled one final knot in her hair before setting it down beside the sink with a playful smirk. She made a swift retreat, taking one last whiff of Bella's decadent floral scent, intermingled with the strawberry-scented body wash permeating the air, and disappeared behind the forest wall.

Bella gingerly stepped out of the shower, drying off her body and hair. She dabbed her face with the towel to avoid prodding her swollen, bruised nose too harshly. Wrapping the towel around her body, she reached for her hairbrush but quickly did a double-take when she noticed the strands of crinkly red hair twisted under the prongs. Somehow, Victoria was getting into her house unnoticed. Her heart soared and collapsed as if it was a roller coaster.

She shrieked when she heard a knock at the bathroom door.

Charlie's voice was muffled through the door. "You okay in there?"

"Yeah, Dad. Be down in a minute." The words came out strained.

Bella waited until she could no longer hear his receding footsteps. Then she dressed in record time and raced down the stairs, taking her backpack down with her, the added weight of the aerosol can and lighter making her feel more secure. When she saw Charlie sitting on the couch, she sighed in relief.

She glanced around to make sure they were alone.

"I ordered pizza. Here," Charlie said, reaching for the glass of water and medicine resting on the coffee table.

Bella sat down on the other side of the couch and quickly downed the pills. Charlie handed her the ice pack, covered in a small towel, which Bella carefully placed on her face, resting her head on the armrest. "Thanks, Dad, she said with a nasally voice.

"Just don't go running into trees anymore."

"Huh?" she asked, perplexed about where he'd gotten that idea from. She took the ice pack off her face.

Charlie was watching her intently.

"That is how you hurt your nose, right? I mean, none of the guys—Jake didn't do that to you, did he?"

"No, Dad! I really did run into a tree. You know me, I have two left feet. He—" Bella didn't finish. She had almost said Jacob would never do something like that to her, but memories of his angry outburst came unbidden to her mind in frightening clarity. _Old Jacob_ would have never hurt her so viciously. He never would have grabbed a heavy motorcycle and thrown it across the garage with his bare hulk hands, endangering them both with his lack of restraint.

"Okay," Charlie replied, with a gruff voice. Whatever he saw in her face satisfied him.

After a brief moment of silence, neither knowing what to say to the other, he picked up the TV remote and turned on the sports channel. Bella pulled out random sheets of paper from her binder and pretended to do homework.

She wouldn't let him out of her sight for the rest of the afternoon. And when nightfall arrived, she pretended to be asleep on the couch, so that when Charlie retreated to his bedroom, she could guard his door. When she woke up at sunrise, drowsy from her restless sleep, she put one ear against his door. As soon as she heard his steady breathing, she drifted over to the kitchen and made breakfast.

Sunday passed by much as Saturday afternoon did, with Charlie watching TV and Bella leaning over her books.

When school resumed on Monday, Bella was so distracted by fear, she felt more unhinged by her small-town obligations. While sharing lunch period outside with her friends, Bella failed to engage in conversation, which left Connor, Mike's closest friend after Tyler, feeling embarrassed when he reminded her he owed her this year's spring dance. She was called on during Calculus, and she had no idea what topic they were covering, much less what the answer to the teacher's question was.

The rest of the week passed by in a similar fashion, with Bella too dazed and jumpy to carry a conversation or focus on a single task.

At work, she kept looking up whenever the Newton's storefront door opened, expecting to see a hooded figure and a glimpse of red hair. She could picture a gleaming white hand picking up a dagger from the shelf stocked with varied knives and stabbing Mike with it at the register, his blood spraying all over the counter. Although that could have been her own irritation calling forth such gruesome images. After spending the last few days imagining what she would do to Victoria, if only she weren't so indestructible, her thoughts had become increasingly violent.

Bella fervently wished her good vampires were here to protect her and the town. No, that wasn't true. What she truly wanted in that moment was to be a vampire. Someone who stood a chance against a formidable monster like Victoria.

Bella was also debating whether or not she should go back to the Cullen house. While she was afraid of confronting Victoria, the past week revealed that the suspense could be just as agonizing as an attack. She was vulnerable. Her scent was all across town, but each trail ultimately led to her house, to Charlie. There was no guarantee that Victoria would stop at her death. With herself gone, Victoria could go after Charlie, Renée, Phil, or her friends. An immortal being, there would be no end to her wrath, her bloodlust.

Still, as the days passed her by without any tangible danger, Bella became less resolved about doing anything. _Maybe Victoria actually left_ , she considered.

All her bravado had left until she was as spineless as a jellyfish. The sense of urgency had lulled to an uneasy calm, like the gentle tide of a river. The mindless chatter of her friends, the quiet meals with Charlie, the tediousness of homework, it all distracted her from the danger lurking around town, disguised under a hooded jacket.


	2. Help Isn't Coming

_Author's note: A big thanks to those of you still reading._ _Part of the reason I started writing this fanfiction was that I'd never come across this pairing before. Most stories with non-canon pairings make a one-dimensional villain out of Edward, which I don't enjoy reading since he happens to be one of my most favorite characters. Since this fic is canon-based, hopefully the eventual pairing won't feel outlandish or butcher any character._

 _At the end, if there's something you want to praise or criticize, be sure to drop a review._

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Chapter 2: Help Isn't Coming

Waking up on Friday, Bella felt the familiar heat of the sun washing over her skin. It was like a hole-ridden blanket of warmth, the thick breeze storming through the gaps. She closed the window, carelessly dismissing its unlocked state. She hurried through her morning routine, realizing she'd woken up late. Breakfast was a shot of water and a granola bar, and she was out the door in record time.

At lunchtime, her usual circle of friends decided to sit on the lunch tables outside. The plastic covered seats were damp with dew but that was easily overlooked. The sun's longevity seemed promising, though probably everyone knew it wasn't reliable, and everyone present set about making plans.

Mike, despite being so spooked by what he thought he saw in La Push last Saturday that he was constantly recounting the tale as if it were extraordinary (much to his friends' annoyance), was proposing a short hike near the Sol Duc river.

"Aren't you afraid the bear might follow you there?" Lauren taunted with a smirk, inspecting her nails in a very blasé manner.

"Ha. Ha. Very funny," Mike dryly laughed.

"Actually, I was kind of hoping for a girl's night," Jessica pitched in, lively but terse.

Bella glanced between them, noticing Jessica's passive-aggressiveness. After their third breakup, Mike and Jessica were constantly trying to outdo each other, let the other know how fun they were without the other. Having the same ring of friends made it difficult for them to move on, and everyone at the table, except Bella and Angela, had bet on when they would get back together. That is if Jessica didn't decide to go out with Tyler out of spite, which is what Lauren had bet ten bucks on.

Angela caught Bella's eyes, as if to say she wouldn't go without her. Bella quickly nodded in agreement. "Yeah, sure. I'm down for that. Angela?" she said, eager to deflect attention away from her. She felt a flare of jealousy as Angela burrowed deeper into Ben's arms, glancing at him for suggestion.

"Yeah, that sounds nice," Angela answered. "Shoot! Um, my weekend is kind of busy. There's a church convention I have to go to on Saturday, and Ben and I are going out for a picnic on Sunday after mass."

"That's great," Jessica cheered, sounding unpleased. "Listen, we can go today, after school. I can get us to Port Angeles by four, four-thirty" Jessica suggested. "We could go see a movie. There's a couple of good ones that came out last week. And I know a good dine-in theater we can go to."

Mike groaned. "You mean the one a couple blocks east of the docks? That place is awful."

Jessica bristled at his words as if he were personally insulting her. "Shut up," she replied, putting on a large fake smile. "I don't think we need a _boy's_ opinion about girls' night."

Mike rolled his eyes, turning to Tyler, who was quick to pretend he didn't care about their petty feud and began spitballing ideas on what they should do that night.

Jessica turned to Bella and Angela with a dejected expression that quickly cheered up at the prospect of going out. "So, what'd you think? Does a movie sound good? Maybe not. I'd hate to be indoors if the sun's out in Port Angeles. Then again it might not last, so let's make the movie our back-up plan. If it's sunny, we can, I don't know, go walking around the pier...No. Shopping!"

Bella grimaced at the idea of shopping. She could only guess she wanted to shop for dresses now that the spring dance theme had been announced, whatever it was. What was wrong with wearing last year's dress? She almost voiced that question but stopped as if by instinct. Several Barbie Bella sessions with Alice had taught Bella that you shouldn't get in the way of a shopper, not unless you wanted your ear chewed off. _'You can't just wear your prom dress to the charity gala, Bella! That would be atrocious.'_

"A movie's fine," Bella agreed.

Undeterred, Jessica began spouting out movie titles, none of which sounded familiar to Bella. This was no surprise as Bella was completely out of touch with national news and social media, although she could tell they were rom-coms by the way she gushed about them. Angela busied herself on her phone, dutifully searching for showtimes in Port Angeles.

Bella suddenly recalled Mike mention a movie he'd been meaning to see. Whether it was this or last week, she couldn't say. "Isn't there a horror movie that came out recently? I'd like to see that."

"That one's been out for a while," Jessica complained, intent on seeing a chick-flick. Bella couldn't fathom sitting through an hour and a half of ridiculously-wrought romance. _Gooey eyes, loud kisses, cheesy declarations of love, no, thank you,_ Bella thought. Bella never enjoyed the romantic comedy genre as much as her mother. However, having been the victim of unrequited love, she had a newfound distaste for them. It was borderline hatred.

Angela, thankfully, broke her out of her musings. "I don't really like scary movies. But there's a new Marvel movie that came out last Friday. I'd like to watch it with you guys. What do you think?"

Bella shook her head but spoke in the affirmative. "That's fine." To be honest, there was a twinge of anxiety at the mention of superheroes, which recalled an early conversation with Edward, and she found herself making a fleeting glance over to the banal round table, where Edward had pressed to hear her theories. _Radioactive spiders_. _Kryptonite_. _What if I'm not a superhero? What if I'm the bad guy?_ Snippets arrived unbidden to her mind.

"You've been saying _fine_ a lot lately," Jessica pointed out.

Bella didn't acknowledge her words. She kept her gaze down, thumbing the cap of her lemonade bottle.

"They have a five pm screening at the Woodland Plaza, downtown. And it's 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes," Angela said. "We can have dinner after."

"Great. Superheroes it is," Jessica okayed.

A girl's night suddenly seemed like a bad idea to Bella.

She glanced at her watch. Lunch period was almost over. She got up to throw the empty lemonade bottle away, slowly to pass the time. Angela followed her to the trash bin, tray in hand.

Angela felt compelled to ask. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Bella said automatically. She inwardly cringed when she realized how that sounded. "Why?"

"I don't know. You seem like you've got a lot on your mind."

Bella couldn't very well tell her about Victoria. And she didn't even know where to begin if she could. There was something normal she could bring up though. An explanation for her lackluster behavior. "Do you remember Jacob from La Push?"

Angela nodded, recalling him from the numerous gatherings they had over at First Beach. He and Bella usually stuck together; childhood friends, she remembered.

"We sort of had a falling out. He says he doesn't want to be friends anymore."

"Oh."

Like most of their group, Angela had suspected there was something more than friendship between them. But she never dared to intrude on her life by commenting on that, especially not after she'd seen Bella briskly walked up to Lauren only to shove her down on the sandy shore for a tasteless joke about how Jacob was her rebound. It made Angela feel guilty for ever presuming just as much.

"Just like that?"

"Yeah," Bella said simply.

"That would be weighing anyone down. I'm sorry I asked." Angela looked at her apologetically, regretting her probing.

"No problem."

The bell rang and Bella had never been more grateful to hear its grating sound than at that moment.

When the last bell rang signaling the end of the school day and the start of Spring Break, Jessica texted her, saying she'd drive by her house in a few minutes to pick her up. She also wrote, with a sad face emoji, that there were scattered showers in Port Angeles. _Movie it is_. Without replying, Bella drove home.

Once in her bedroom, she tossed her bookbag on the rocking chair and searched for a small leather knapsack, which had been pushed into the dusty corner of her closet. She moved the hairspray and lighter into the bag, concealing it under an extra shirt. She freshened up in the bathroom, tying her hair in a ponytail, then pulled some money from her jar of college fund money—it had been reduced to a pittance, given that she'd used a lot of the money for motorcycle parts, which were assuredly sitting scrap metal now that Jake had hurled them into a crumpled heap with wheels in his garage.

A loud honking sound reached her ears. Bella quickly locked up, happy to go along with whatever her friends wanted. After all, it would distract her from herself. Charlie was planning to head over to Harry's tonight, so he wouldn't be alone. And given that Victoria was nowhere to be found, Bella didn't want to be alone either. She figured she'd follow the old adage: safety in numbers. She quickly texted him that she was going out with her girlfriends.

On the drive, Jessica and Angela made up for Bella's quietness, animatedly conversing and singing along to radio pop like regular teenagers. They managed to find a parking spot on the second floor of the downtown parking garage, though Jessica had to race another car for it. There was still some time before the movie started and the tickets had already been bought earlier that day, so Jessica pulled a cigarette box and a lighter from the center storage compartment of her car. Bella kept silent, though she wondered since when she'd picked up smoking. Angela, however, was unable to keep the disapproval off her face.

"Want one?" Jessica asked to no one specifically, raising the box between them.

Bella pulled one out with slight hesitation. She didn't make a habit of smoking, self-conscious of the horrendous taste that lingered in her tongue and clothes around Charlie, but wasn't as strongly opposed to it as Angela, who'd half-jokingly scoffed at Jessica's offer. "Absolutely not," Angela declined, her face distorting as if she'd smelled something bad.

Jessica went on without paying her any mind, handing the lighter to Bella after she'd lit her own.

A cloud of smoke was expelled from between Jessica's painted lips. Angela's nose wrinkled at the smell; she opened the door, sticking her head out for fresh air like a dog.

"Isn't it ridiculous that we can smoke at eighteen but have to wait another three years to drink?" Jessica mused aloud.

"It's never stopped anyone," Bella said, taking a puff of her own.

Jessica smiled, conspiratorially, before gushing about how one of the guys from La Push had brought weed to last week's party at First Beach, yes, the very same one where Mike and a couple of other guys had come running out of the woods screaming about bears as if the Devil himself had been running after them with a spear. Bella's eyebrows lifted in surprise. How could Mike and the others have been so stupid as to go to the cops when they were half-baked, to her father whom she told she would be at that same gathering?

"You know, Bella, if I'd known you were a closeted lawbreaker, I would've never let you leave my side. I know where we can find the hottest parties, the hottest guys..." She let the sentence hang in the air and become embittered by the wisps of smoke. Then added a wink that made Bella uncomfortable.

After an awkward silence, Bella struggled to come up with an easy response. "Yeah, well. Guess I didn't know I had it in me. My mom, she's a bit more open to these kinds of things than Charlie." She paused, realizing that she tended to use Charlie as a scapegoat for her behavior, good or bad.

"I'll bet. Small towns are so close-minded."

Angela felt self-righteous at Jessica's tone of superiority. Unlike Jessica, she enjoyed the sense of togetherness in Forks, the quaint stores along Main Street, where everyone was welcoming, the blessed gatherings at church, where she helped in after-school classes and led the occasional prayer. There was tradition and community, things that were lost in the big city.

Noting Angela's pointed silence, Bella spoke, glancing around at the sallow-yellow lit concrete structure. "It isn't so bad. There's a lot Forks offers that big cities can't."

Angela smiled gratefully.

"Right," Jessica said, unconvinced. "Still, it must suck to have a cop for a dad."

 _Makes it all the more thrilling to break rules,_ she thought.

She almost said as much but chose not to. She didn't like where the conversation was headed. Abruptly, Bella flung open her car door, stamping on the half-finished cigarette. The cold wind tousled the loose strands of hair across her face as she began walking out of the garage. Jessica opened her car door, agitated. "What the hell?" she gasped, then louder, "Bella, wait up!" Angela got out the car too, sprinting over to Bella with Jessica in tow.

They finally caught up with Bella at the entrance of the theater, Angela muttering apologies to bystanders and Jessica pushing them aside without care. "What the hell?" Jessica repeated when they reached her. Bella only shrugged, walking up to a tall, gangly guy at one of the registers in the concession area of the lobby. "What would you guys like? My treat."

Jessica pointedly frowned at Bella. A second later she uncrossed her arms, reaching for a box of chocolate raisins, a bag of gummy worms, and a bar of Hershey's. After pointedly dropping them on the counter, she smiled at the cashier and requested a medium-sized soda. Bella knew she would accept her apology.

"Two medium sodas," Angela added shyly, slightly perturbed by her odd behavior. Bella really seemed to be having a tough time getting her mind off Jacob.

But she was only partially right. Jacob's parting words were almost inconsequential, like a hint of something acrid, considering what happened to her later that day. And that fear was a pungent horror. A train heading straight for her, headlights bright and engine roaring.

Even though almost a week has passed by since the incident, she was so riled up that her heart broke into a sprint at the slight glimpse of red hair, but it was just a random, _human_ woman meeting up with her boyfriend. She felt silly for staring. The hair wasn't even close to the strong scarlet-orange color of Victoria's waves; this red came from a corner store dye box.

Walking into the theater, they found it was packed with people. There were couples on their phones, elderly men parking their scooters, children fidgeting in their seats while their parents fawned over spilt popcorn and small sticky fingers.

Once Bella decided to be present, in the moment as they say, she found the movie quite entertaining. She was glad that there was a lot of outrageous action, although the romantic bits made her cringe to the point she couldn't resist sinking into her seat and covering her ears and closing her eyes till she felt her seat shake from the switch to action sequences.

Leaving the theater, Jessica couldn't stop talking about how hot the male lead was. Bella smiled at her words, the movie's epic story leaving her in better spirits. They walked along the block of restaurants and decided on a fancy pizza place with intimate lighting. It was modestly crowded, and as they conversed, Bella forced herself to engage in talk, humming and oohing at the appropriate times and offering some comments about the movie.

As they found their way back to the parking garage, their bellies full and their minds distracted, they found that they couldn't remember where they had parked. The second floor was full of cars now that many people were getting off work, ready to celebrate their Friday night downtown. The air was quietly still, the only sounds coming from the occasional traffic. They wandered down the general direction of their car, sticking close to those parked so they stayed out of the way of incoming vehicles.

They skidded to a stop when a woman in drab, torn clothing emerged from between a Suburban and a Prius and grasped onto Angela's shoulder. Her face was obscure, long shadows and yellow-light glared skin. Her long fingers had sharp fingernails that dug into Angela's skin. "Please help me. My boyfriend—he's hurt." Her voice was sweet and enthralling despite the screech of alarm.

"I'll call for help. Okay?" Angela tried soothingly, reaching for her phone. She fumbled with her fingers, her body buzzing from the sprinting start of adrenaline.

"No, we have to help him now," the woman urged, tugging at Angela's sleeve. Angela glanced at Jessica in alarm.

"Calm down. What happened? How badly hurt is he?" Jessica asked, her eyes searching.

Without warning, Jessica found herself flying backwards through the air. Bella gasped in horror, flinching at the splatting sound her body made as it hit the concrete. Up until this point, she had been frozen in abject terror and weighty recognition. Unlike her friends, Bella had immediately realized the woman was no victim but a cunning liar. And she wasn't alone.

An impeccably dressed dark-skinned man appeared over Jessica's wounded body in the next half second. A sudden apparition that created a heavy stone of horror in the trio's guts. The man kicked Jessica onto her back. In one fluid movement, he stooped down and lifted her by the neck with one hand.

"Please," Jessica choked out.

Angela started walking over to them, her gait alternately brisk and tentative. The woman made no move to stop her.

"Let her go. You don't have to do this," Angela pleaded to the stranger, taking smaller steps as she got closer. Despite the courageous surge of energy, she sensed something otherworldly in his demeanor. The man smiled but otherwise paid no mind to her pitiful petition for mercy. He pulled Jessica's neck to his mouth and steadied her struggling body with his other hand. Try as she did, Jessica found her vision bleeding into black, white spots shimmering around the edges. He didn't drain her completely, choosing to kill her with a snap of her neck.

"Oh god!" Angela gasped.

From her position, Bella saw Victoria's intention of snatching Angela and quickly ran up to her, spreading her arms as if to block her way from between the cars. "Angela, run!" Her friend listened without a moment's hesitation.

Victoria made no move for chase.

Up close, Bella realized that over the course of a year her feelings of fear and resentment had twisted the vampire's fine features into something more suitably monstrous. But the truth was Victoria was just as deceptively beautiful as she had been when they first met in the clearing last spring. She had a very soft, youthful face, with large cheekbones and small, thin features that lent to her almost innocent beauty. At the present, her expression wasn't odious. Her small, shapely lips were set in a slight pout, as if ambivalent to the violence around her. Inside was a voice sweeter and girlier than Bella had ever expected—she'd played the role of a panicked victim with perfection. Nothing like the sultry, husky voice that taunted Bella in her nightmares.

Staring into her eyes, Bella registered the fact that Victoria wasn't outright attacking her. Despite the warning in them, in that moment, she didn't look like a killer.

It took Bella a second to realize that Victoria's eyes hinted at her own despondency. Like her, Victoria was a pained soul. It struck her as odd that she could see anything remotely human about a red-eyed vampire. But was it so hard to believe she could make that leap, just as she had with Edward and the Cullens? For almost two months from the first time she saw the Cullens in the school cafeteria, she'd watched them from the corner of her eye, seeing through their routine charade to the struggle within. Edward himself, despite his vague, sometimes half-hearted warnings, leaned hard into his family, and later on her, to quiet the dispassionate loneliness lurking within. A kind of loneliness she shared, having never had anyone but herself and the books she gorged to rely on.

The moment was irreversible. Like two kindred souls, they shared a flash of understanding, only one had the strength for revenge while the other could only glower in the privacy of her bedroom.

Bella seemed stuck in the moment, her mind's human pace halting any action on her part. And while Victoria experienced the mirror effect as well, she ultimately decided to move things along.

 _I'm going soft_ , Victoria thought dismissively, with a wave of contempt.

She pushed Bella down to the ground, who gasped in pain for landing back on bony elbows. Victoria ran ahead of Angela, who was seconds away from the entrance gate, and smacked her down the middle with one arm. The force caused Angela to fly back with puzzling momentum. She landed hard on her ass, her head tapping hard against the concrete ground. She wailed in pain, repeating God's name, as Victoria rushed over to her in a fast blur. She grabbed Angela by one arm and proceeded to drag her. She wasn't careful and remained unfazed despite the impactful sound of the human's arm dislocating and her resultant hyperventilating gasps.

Victoria dropped her unceremoniously at Bella's feet.

Bella scuttled over to Angela, reeling from Angela's screams and Jessica's deafening silence, and hurled herself over her prone body like a human shield. Angela grasped Bella's arms, tightening her grip as if her grasp anchored her to her only friend in these last few minutes of life.

Bella gazed down at her with heartbroken eyes. Then she looked up at Victoria, her eyes hardening at Victoria's affectless stare despite being in level with her waist, where a strip of smooth skin was peeking out from under her white tank top. "Kill me if you'd like. But leave her out of this." There was an edge of hysteria to her voice.

Laurent emerged from behind Bella, having tossed Jessica's lifeless body beside some random car. He crouched over her, placing a cold hand on one shoulder, and made a condescending ticking sound with his tongue. "Bella," he crooned with a faint French accent, glancing into Victoria's eyes as he spoke, "You're in no position to bargain. Surrender. I'm afraid there is no escaping this. Victoria plans to kill you. Slowly."

Bella felt hot with fury, both at herself for not saving Jessica in time and at the two vampires before her for indiscriminately targeting her friends. Bright white lights blinded Bella for an instant but the instant she realized that the source of light was a new model truck headed down their aisle, she sprinted over to the car, yelling for help, smacking the door for good measure, but it sped around the turn without slowing down. Both Angela and Bella's hearts fell at the sight. _Thump-thump, lump._

Unfazed by her laughably vain attempt at help, Laurent picked Angela up from the ground by the collar of her shirt. She whimpered in fear, kicking with all her might at his legs, using her good arm to try and push his face away from hers.

Bella opened her purse, grabbing the spray in her right hand and holding the lighter behind her. Victoria cocked her head to one side as she watched Bella walk purposely over to them, having not caught her actions through the distraction of Angela's thrashing.

Laurent glanced at her. Bella forced herself to make eye contact and swiftly pulled out her weapons in front of her, spraying the hairspray at his face and holding the switch of the long lighter open. His face instantly became engulfed in flames, a murderous snarl escaping his throat, and he ran a few steps back at vampire speed, only to crash into one of the cars. It immediately set off the wailing car alarm. Despite the harsh sounds, Bella followed him without letting up on her weapons. The heat of the spray radiated towards her fingers, but she knew she couldn't stop now. Bella felt a frisson of twisted pleasure at the sight of his pain.

Presently, Victoria herself felt a morsel of respect for the girl. With a wicked smile, she slammed Bella into the car on her left. Her hands, sweating from adrenaline, lost their grip on the items as she slid down the side of the door. The lighter and spray can clamored to a spot under the car. She palmed the back of her head where she'd been hit, blinking away the twinkling white spots in her vision. She felt a bump already forming but no blood. From her twisted position by the tire, Bella saw Victoria walk over to Angela.

"You just made her death more painful," Victoria said, very matter-of-fact.

Angela tried squirming away, but Victoria halted her movements with a swift pound-and-grind to her calf, and she howled in pain, piercing through the thick fog in Bella's mind. Without pause, Victoria began punching her repeatedly in the guts. One fist after the other. By the sixth blow, Angela had grown still and dreadfully quiet.

Bella began searching around for her weapons, but as soon as she had them in her hand, Victoria reappeared before her. "That's not going to work a second time." She slapped the items out of Bella's hands, breaking the bones in her fingers. She cried out at the pain, her panic growing as she realized she was alone with two vengeful vampires. And there were no superheroes to save her like in the film she'd just watched with her friends.

She listened with downcast eyes as she heard Laurent tread over to her from behind. She trembled when he momentarily paused a couple feet away, just out of sight. He shuffled over to Victoria's side at an agonizingly slow pace, and Bella couldn't help looking up at him. Parts of his face were scorched away by the fire, exposing flesh and a bony white cheekbone, until he resembled a dark comic book villain. A DC comic, for sure. There was something akin to liquid silver oozing from his wounds. _Venom_ , Bella realized. _They bleed just like us_.

Victoria bent down to her level, thumbing away her warm tears, which Bella hadn't realized were falling down her cheeks. Bella couldn't take her eyes off Victoria despite the ball of nerves twisting in her stomach. There was something oddly disturbing about experiencing a gentle touch from your tormentor. It made Bella feel overly warm, the heat spreading from multiple points on her body, including the junction between her legs. It didn't fail to fill her with shame.

Victoria paid no mind to it; victims often experienced symptoms of sexual desire in their aroused, near-death states. (Those were always preferable to the ones that soiled themselves.)

"You can't begin to imagine what I'm going through, Bella," Victoria lamented, without a hint of enjoyment, her expression forlorn. "A part of me died when James did. And another piece of me will be lost the second you breathe your last breath. Your school girl crush doesn't compare to what we had. We were mates, you see. Bonded for eternity. Something you know nothing about."

She intimately cupped Bella's chin with one hand. Bella weakly shook her head, trying to escape her cold grasp, which brought a small upwards twitch to Victoria's lips.

Victoria stood back up, pulling Bella up with her. She looked fondly down at her, holding Bella's gaze. She felt much like a snake charmer guiding the cobra's sway. Although Bella was certainly no lethal cobra, her light, dazzled sway and earlier display of foresight and bravery had at least upgraded her from a scrawny mouse to a more intrepid rat snake. She had bite but clearly wasn't venomous.

Without preamble, Victoria spun into a back kick that struck Bella hard across her face. It destroyed all the fight left within her. Bella's teeth were knocked loose from her gums, the insides of her cheeks gushing blood and mixing with saliva. One of her teeth had even punctured her lip clean through. She could taste the blood, smell it. Nausea reared its nasty head. She sunk lower to the ground, crying out as she tried breaking her fall with her broken hands. Her face felt numb, bloody saliva escaping down the sides of her mouth as she heaved.

"I'm going to make you suffer to your dying breath, and once I'm through with you, I'm going to make sure I murder your beloved Cullens."

Victoria kept her eyes on her as she said this, wanting to commit this picture to memory. Seeing Bella all bloody and wounded on the ground, squirming around like a worm, with eyes so large and horrified was deeply satisfying. She turned away, walking towards the edge of the garage floor at a human pace. Laurent followed, his nostrils flaring with fury as he purposefully stepped on one of Bella's outstretched hands with his full weight. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

A chilling breeze blew against Bella's bruised skin. They had left, jumping out from the second floor without batting an eye.

She inched her way over to Angela, choking on a sob as she leaned against Angela's cold body. The gentle wheezing sound that escaped from between Angela's lips refueled Bella's resolve. She was still alive. _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._ She reached into Angela's pocket, pushing it out with the heel of her hand. Dialing 911 was a feat that rendered her in tears. Her broken hands and fingers felt as if they were shifting and grinding in place.

The instant she pressed the green dial button, she collapsed in triumphant defeat.


	3. She Wants Revenge

_Author's note: Without getting too much into it, this chapter is centered around Victoria and contains a sex scene. I didn't set out to write it, but in making a Victoria-centric chapter, I found that it just...came out. I feel that, although perhaps unnecessary, it at least captures the essence of Victoria. Hopefully, you will agree._

 _Thank you for your views. As always, I encourage you to review. Even if it's just a few quick words. They not only make my day, they help get my writing mojo going too._

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Chapter 3: She Wants Revenge

Perched atop the beaten roof of an abandoned warehouse in downtown Port Angeles, Victoria and Laurent watched the comings and goings of the dark street. In the evening blue sky, they resembled fallen angels, ready to swoop down and pick off unsuspecting human prey. As it were, there was a plentiful supply of easy pickings before them. A raucous gang of friends were cackling with feverish drunkenness and stumbling along cracked sidewalks and worn tarmac. A woman and her younger half-sister were twirling clumsily towards their house, high as kites and just as likely to get entangled with each other and collapse.

But Victoria didn't quite feel like hunting with Laurent. It was something she always did alone. Even when James had been alive, she'd preferred it that way. Laurent knew this, yet he lingered at her side, which annoyed Victoria to no end. She began to pace along the tattered, damp roof with bare feet.

Laurent himself was busy picking at his face, angling a piece of broken glass in front of him. The burns had mostly healed, but there were pieces missing around his cheeks, as if they'd been chipped off.

"I find myself possessed with a strange desire to both commend the human girl and destroy her," he mused aloud, checking every angle of his reflection.

"She's mine," Victoria reminded him for the umpteenth time.

"I won't go behind your back, if that's what you mean."

Victoria stayed silent. She knew he was speaking the truth, but she wasn't sure for how long. His intentions were unclear but clearly marked towards power. When she and James first crossed paths with him, he seemed keenly interested in joining their coven. She didn't fight James on his decision to keep him. She remembered thinking he'd prove useful to them serving as a pretend-leader of their coven in case their tracking games went array. But in the end, it was James that took the fall, not Laurent. The Cullens had seen right through their act, and the coward had fled at the first opportunity.

As much as she wanted to end him for his betrayal, it went against her instinct to attack another vampire. Her gift was evasion, not confrontation. It had served her well in her troubled London youth and had made her well-matched to James. It was also counterproductive to her plans. Ending the Olympic Coven was going to take more than just one vampire.

Creating a newborn army was one option, but it was illegal and risky business. Even she was hesitant to make a large scale production of revenge. That's why she had to use Laurent to help her do the dirty work of killing the Cullens, though Bella she'd reserved for herself.

If she ever had to resort to such dangerous tactics, she would have to convince Laurent of its necessity. Trick him into taking all the risk for her. To prowl the streets for hopeless drifters and train their wild newborn selves with utmost secrecy and seclusion, so that she could lead a full-scale attack against the oblivious Cullens. Such thoughts, she knew, were likely to remain fantasies. Not many vampires were willing to incur the wrath of the Volturi, and given her brief encounter with them, neither was Victoria.

"Do you suppose this will heal back completely?" Laurent asked, interrupting her train of thought.

"It won't. Part of your face was burnt to ash. Venom doesn't work on ashes."

"How do you know? Did you try that on James' remains?"

Victoria ignored his question. His words reopened invisible wounds she didn't want exposed in front of him, who couldn't understand that the deceased are not the only casualty of death. The pain, and the need to quell it in the presence of another, recalled her mission to mind. She spun around with an air of determination, long shadows outlining her slim features.

"I need you back in Denali."

He turned to her as if to gage her seriousness. "So soon? I was under the impression you wanted us to drag this thing out. There is still much that can be done to break the girl."

"We won't be able to do anything if we attract more attention from those wolves. They seem determined to put an end to our fun, which is why I need you to extract whatever information you can on the Cullens while I keep the pups running around in little circles."

"I cannot go back looking like this. There will be too many questions."

"You must and you will. All you've managed to extract from them is the fact that Edward fled to Denali when he first came across the human girl, his singer, a year ago and that the small raven-haired girl can see the future, although that ability must be weak and flawed, otherwise we'd have both been killed a long time ago."

Laurent stayed silent, deliberating.

Aware of his reluctance, she turned to him, gently resting her hand on his shoulder.

"You have pleased me with your loyalty, Laurent, but it's time you help me elsewhere. I understand Irina has taken a liking to you."

"And I, her. But the rest of her clan is suspicious of me."

"It's your eyes. They won't trust you if you don't assimilate to their lifestyle. You must follow their diet."

"It is not easy to go against one's nature."

"I never claimed that it was. But if we are to stand any chance against the Cullens, we must gather as much information as possible. For that, you must focus on gaining their trust. Garner sympathy from Irina with your wounds, if you must, but keep our plans secret. Report back to me when you have found something useful. You know where to find me."

"Alright," he sighed, standing up. "I'll go. Hunt for a lion or a bear on the way. The sisters claim they're easiest to swallow down." Victoria turned away, having already dismissed him in her mind. "À bientôt, Victoria." With that, he leaped down the building, heading north towards Denali. She listened to the sound of shifting leaves as he gradually disappeared amid miles of thick foliage.

At last, she was alone.

She didn't hesitate to head west and join the heavy foot traffic in the scenic, touristic part of downtown. She searched for what promised to be a fun, tasty meal. Normally, she appreciated a quick meal, but after tonight's events she figured she was entitled to a reward. She had hurt the human and, though it was more emotional than physical, it was what she had set out to do.

If she weren't kidding herself, Victoria would see this excursion for what it was: Something to take her mind off the Cullens and their... _pet_.

She set her eyes on an early-twenty-somethings couple. The woman had a shapely figure that she proudly displayed in a two-piece dress that clung tightly to her warm brown skin. Her boyfriend was dressed casually in dark blue but wore an expensive haircut. They held onto each other's arms and strolled down the sidewalk with confidence. The kind of couple she could lure over to an alleyway with silent promises of sensual fun.

They disappeared behind the door of a nightclub nearby. The blue neon sign cast a harsh light onto the street but it didn't have much range. There were plenty of badly lit streets and alleyways she could take an unsuspecting victim to for an uninterrupted feeding.

She followed them inside, sliding in casually between the warm bodies that collectively emitted a heavy musk that appealed to her bloodlust.

She resisted a pout as she spotted the two meeting up with a large group of friends. Luckily, they weren't the only tasty fish in this pond.

She had to find someone foolish enough to follow her into a nearby alley. Someone whom she could seduce out into the night with nary a wandering eye. Looking around, Victoria spotted a lone brunette sipping a martini, bouncing out of tune in very high heels, at one of the round tables. The brunette was young, her awkwardness scantily clad in a black dress. Victoria noticed the girl tugging the high hemline, apparently self-conscious of her lack of modesty, as her large smoky eyes scanned the room.

 _She's perfect._

The girl looked up at Victoria, having sensed her penetrating gaze. Her heartbeat instantly escalated at the sight of a voracious-looking woman sauntering over to her. She forced herself to look away and quickly raised her glass for a mock-aloof sip, but the rim missed her lips and a splash of drink spilt down her chest. _Fuck!_ she cursed, jumping at the cold.

She quickly fished a couple napkins and dabbed fervently at her dress. She was glad she had decided to wear black; at least the wet stain would be invincible in the dark.

She glanced up to see what the woman made of her clumsiness, afraid she had disappeared out of disinterest, and gasped when she saw Victoria standing right beside her, one hand casually hooked around one of the belt loops of her pants. She found she was too enthralled by the stranger's electric energy to remember her embarrassment.

The red-headed woman's beauty was enough to distract her from her tattered, unkempt clothing. A plain white tank top and ripped jeans should have stood out to her in a room of finely-dressed clubbers, but it didn't even register in her mind.

"Hi!" the girl tried shouting over the music.

Victoria pretended to not hear her, instead raking her eyes down the girl's body and running one hand up the girl's arm, angling her perfectly for an intimate embrace. They stared into each other's eyes, which appeared black in the dim lighting. At least to human eyes, they did.

Dazzled by her scent and her confidence, the girl slowly leaned in for a kiss, her eyes fluttering closed with lucid anticipation. Victoria stayed frozen still, her lips hovering over hers as she contemplated her next move.

"Come with me," she commanded after a second.

The girl's eyes fluttered open but she showed no sign of moving of her own volition. Victoria slipped her hand into hers and tugged her away from the table. The girl followed without complaint.

Once outside, the two became entangled in one another. Hands seeking skin, lips and noses clashing, tongues fighting for dominance.

The girl didn't even notice that the alluring stranger had pulled her into a dark alleyway. The alarm bells should have gone off in her head, but she was swept into the moment, distracted by the harsh sensation of wood as she suddenly found herself sprawled on a stack of discarded pallets and by the passionate red-head, who hoisted her quivering legs over her toned shoulders.

A blush rose on the girl's face. It faintly reminded Victoria of Bella—so pale and soft, her blush making her as enticing as a rose petal—and her touches turned harsher until she was practically rough-housing the girl.

For some reason, the human pet was invading her thoughts at this ungodly hour.

"I've never done this before," the girl gasped as Victoria hurriedly pushed her dress down to her waist and leaned forward to run her languid tongue between her breasts, up to her neck, practically tasting the blood that pooled so close to the surface. "Oh god. I don't even know your name."

"Victoria," she offered offhandedly.

"Oh. Mmm. I'm Riley."

"Pleasure," Victoria murmured, wishing the girl would just shut up. The sound of her thrumming heart, however, was music to her ears.

Riley uttered a moan, arching her back. "Fuck. I can't believe this is happening," she gasped, releasing a nervous laugh.

Riley wasn't sure if this made her a lesbian or not, but _did it really matter?_ she wondered. Tonight was about finally letting go and enjoying herself, like her friends were always pushing her to do. _The same friends that ditched you in the club,_ she scoffed in her mind. _Just like your boyfriend did._

Riley was growing light-headed from Victoria's attention to her body. The woman's cheeks were like ice packs on her thighs, increasing the intimate burn at their apex.

She relaxed, as best she could on the wooden pallets that served as their impromptu bed. A small one at that as her head was hanging off one end, making everything feel more surreal.

Riley moaned fiercely and loudly. Never had she felt such intense pleasure. Not with any of her boyfriends, although that came to no surprise given the fact she'd only ever been in two mediocre relationships. James, her recent ex, could go fuck himself. _Gah, how can I be thinking about him right now? Focus, Riley,_ she chastised herself. She closed her eyes and began thrusting salaciously against Victoria.

Victoria paid no mind to her victim's mental struggle, enraptured in a frenzy over the vibrancy of her potent blood, which pooled so close to the surface. Clean, red hot, and delicious.

So riveted by the hummingbird beat of her heart, Victoria let out a growl of annoyance when she felt another human presence behind her.

"What the fuck... Riley? Is that you?" came a male voice.

Riley instantly shot up at the sound of a familiar voice. Her hands fumbled as they struggled to lift the crumpled dress over her exposed breasts. She had a hard time pulling herself out of the lustful haze she was in, disconcerted by the sight of her ex and the pulses of mind-numbing pleasure.

She didn't much care for him, but his unexpected appearance made her self-conscious of her whorish behavior.

"James? My god, I—" She unwrapped her legs from around Victoria and attempted to hop down from the pallets.

Riley released a startled gasp when she found herself pinned back down by strong hands. Her eyes met the dark, dewy sky, and she tilted her head back up to witness the standoff before her.

James, an average-looking guy with short dirty-blonde hair, rushed over, as if to protect the girl from Victoria. "Hey, you! Let go of her."

Riled up by the sound of his name, Victoria slowly turned to him with a steady glare. Exuding lust and rage, she grabbed him by the arms and pulled him into a hurried kiss. He smelled of expensive cologne and beer, and his blood, though unspecial, called to her.

Initially, the man resisted, but despite the dirtiness of it all—this was, after all, taking place in a damp, beat-up alley—he found himself excited by the fantasy-come-true. Victoria knew he wouldn't pass this up; he was a man, after all.

He released a nervous laugh, raking his hand across his square jaw as if to hide the reflexive grin. _This is fucking crazy,_ he thought, with a shake of his head. _I can't believe this is actually happening. There's just no fucking way._

He found himself pulling back, disbelieving. But then Victoria's hand slipped down his chest and palmed his erection through the coarse fabric of his jeans. He released a hesitant groan, his eyes drifting close at the sensation.

Victoria was glad that it took very little coaxing on her part to keep him from calling attention to them. She was also glad that they seemed to enter an unspoken agreement to stay as silent as possible.

Victoria turned her attention over to Riley, who'd witnessed the whole thing with wide, silently questioning eyes. She pinned the girl's arms out at her sides to continue lavishing attention to her rosy flesh. The sound of a pulled zipper reached their ears and the dense cloud of desire began thundering underneath their skin.

The man entered Victoria from behind, tentatively at first as he pushed through her body's natural resistance but with increasing fervor as his nerves dissipated into single-minded pursuit.

Victoria imagined it was her mate looming behind her, gripping her hips for stability. Beneath closed lids, flashes of memory bled into sight. She could almost pretend it was her James in faded jeans, pounding mercilessly into her from behind, hungry lips grazing her neck, bloodied teeth scraping her skin. Showing her that she was his. She guided the motions, one hand tightly fisted around his light brown hair. Showing him that he was hers. The images and ghostly remnants of his touch filled her with a pang of desperate pain. She fiercely squashed it down.

Victoria came with such an intensity, she could no longer resist biting into the girl's milky thigh.

Riley screamed in pain, stupefied by its appearance during the long streak of pleasure. Lifting her head, she panicked at the sight of the women biting down on her leg, suckling at it fiendishly.

"Vicky," she gasped.

At the unwelcome sound of a nickname, Victoria growled and dominated Riley once again, holding her down as she weakly fought against her indecent death. The man behind her was oblivious to the horror, moaning and gasping along with them.

Victoria sucked out the last drops of Riley's blood, leisurely licking her blood-coated lips. With heavy-lidded eyes, she turned around in the man's arms and proceeded to kiss him.

She opened her eyes now, looking at the man in closer detail. He ran his tongue along his lips, perplexed by the metallic taste on his tongue. He touched his fingers to his lips and looked down at them. It looked black in the dark, but he was almost sure it was blood. That would explain why he was tasting pennies.

"What?" he asked, trailing off.

He glanced up, looking intently at Victoria for explanation, but then his eyes drifted over to Riley, who was strangely still with dark trails running along her thigh from a circular wound. A bite mark, he realized, though it only created more questions.

Victoria reached out and firmly grasped his jaw in her hands. She raked her eyes across his youthful features, but all she could reconcile was that he wasn't James. _Everything's wrong,_ she bemoaned. Where was his luscious golden-brown hair? His penetrating, deep-set red eyes? His thin lips pulled into that signature cocky sneer? The kind that always set her sex on fire during a game of hide-seek-fuck.

With just enough foresight to realize she shouldn't lash out violently and make a mess, Victoria pulled his neck down to her mouth and began feeding.

Out of breath and stupefied by drink and her sudden attack, James' struggles were weak enough to escape her notice. She sucked the blood from his body within seconds and promptly dropped the empty husk. It hit the damp ground unceremoniously.

A few drops had leaked from the corners of her mouth, and she wiped the drops into her mouth, sucking on her fingers to prolong enjoyment. She was full, but the thing about human blood and vampires was that feeding invigorated them, almost imbued them with superpowers—and gifted vampires like Victoria experience this more fiercely—instead of lethargy.

With just a few gallons of human blood, vampires could feel alive.

The resurgence of energy came from the absorption of blood as it mixed with the venom in their repurposed organs and veins, mixed and transformed, for warmth and energy. It's this synergy that nomadic vampires lived for. And as with all animals, they also lived to mate. A once-in-an-eternity bond.

Victoria unquestioningly believed in this philosophy. As do most vampires, regardless of whether they were born millennia ago or in the last decade.

The Cullens, who seemed more human than vampire, chose to live differently. Morally rather than animalistically. Human-drinking vampires often interpreted this offensively, as if the Cullens were a first-world empire wagging its condescending finger to the perceived primitive ways of other nations.

Victoria couldn't see how anyone would voluntarily give up their natural diet. Although now that she found herself positioned between two corpses in embarrassing states of undress, she supposed she could see the appeal of switching to animals. A mountain lion's corpse wouldn't be haphazardly splayed out on its back, jeans crumpled at the ankles or dress scrunched into a midriff wrap, with a stupid-looking stricken expression on its face. At least my meal was freshly showered, she thought approvingly.

Now the cumbersome part. To dispose of the bodies, Victoria dropped them into a pile on the damp tarmac and tied the man's belt around both their waists, breaking a couple ribs to get them bundled up nice and tight. She carried them over her shoulder and unceremoniously dumped them in a nearby lake, watching as their bodies slowly faded from the surface, the murky water covering them up like a wet blanket.

She wished all her problems could fade as quickly, if only for a short time. Just as they once did, when she was human.

No matter how painful it was to endure the crack of a whip at the hands of a merciless master or to know her sister was selling her body for the security of a meal, each night sky granted a reprieve from her difficult human life. Sleep was temporary peace. What she wouldn't give to be able to quiet her mind for just a few hours once again.

Lifting her chin at the full moon, she thought of what was to become of her once all was said and done, her thirst for vengeance satiated. Perhaps she would sleep in a tomb for the next few centuries. The way vampires do in films. Or maybe, most likely, she would use the Cullens' Forks residence as her funeral pyre. Burn the Cullen house down to a miserable pile of splintered, ashy wood with herself inside, kneeling beside Bella's corpse with her head down, feeling the heat radiate across her cool, stone-like body till at last she was engulfed in flames and welcomed into oblivion.


	4. Closed or Open Casket

_Author's note: Thank you to those of you still reading. As always, I look forward to seeing your feedback. Reviews are, after all, the ultimate reward for fanfiction writers._

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Chapter 4: Closed or Open Casket

The first thing Bella became conscious of was pain. It radiated throughout her whole body, bone marrow deep. Her eyes were cringed shut under the clinical glare of the bright white light over her head. There was a constant beeping sound that pierced her eardrums and pushed her out of the pit of dreamless sleep. Opening her eyes was a long, arduous battle, as if she didn't have complete control over her body.

Her eyesight was blurry, but she managed to make out the vague shape of a person, like an 8-bit video game character. Once her eyes were able to focus, questions blew up in her mind: _Why is Charlie here? Where am I? What happened?_

Then the memories jabbed into her mind like a slippery knife and the dread came seeping through and through. She could no longer feel her body, just an overall buzz where there should be a thriving pulse.

Her numbness went beyond lethargy; it was a brutal desire to be dead. The living had it so much harder.

When she looked down, what she saw terrified her. The sight took her fear of needles to another level. Her left hand had some pins sticking out if it at odd angles as if she were some voodoo doll in a dollhouse hospital, fake and sinister. Her other hand, the one that Laurent had put his full weight on, was encased in a thick cast. It extended out past her taped fingers, locking them in place, and ran up her forearm.

Her eyes searched around the bright room in alarm. She tried saying Charlie's name, but her jaw was locked in place.

Charlie glanced up from his hands, clenched in prayer, when he heard the rapid beeping sounds of the heart monitor. He shot up from his seat as if electrocuted. "Bells, honey? It's okay. Don't move."

He was unsure of what he should do. Part of him wanted to get the nurse or her doctor, someone who would know how to help her. But he wanted some time alone with her, without hospital personnel pushing him out the door. Up until now, he hadn't experienced a modicum of relief.

Charlie had arrived late from Harry's place on Friday and almost dismissed the bright red "1" blinking on the house phone, indicating a message. When he heard his daughter had been admitted to the ER at Port Angeles Hospital, he was overcome with a striking sense of fear. He called the hospital immediately and pushed the nurse for details with an intensity he'd gained through his years as chief of police. He was her father and he deserved to know, goddammit!

During his drive to the hospital, tension-filled as he raced through the streets in a police cruiser, he went over the facts. Bella had been admitted along with two other girls, Angela and Jessica. One was found dead. The other died inside the ambulance, minutes away from the hospital. Bella was in surgery. She had a concussion, a fractured jaw, several fractures in her left hand and shattered bones in her right.

Pushing the speed limit, he began formulating theories and played them out in his head like stories. Something to bring some sense to the tragedy.

His first thought had been a hit and run, but a single car couldn't have inflicted that much damage to three people at once unless the prick was some raging lunatic in an army tank. And they were found in the parking garage, not in the middle of a freeway. And there was another thing, as far as the nurse could tell, there were no bullet wounds or stab wounds on any of them, just some odd puncture wounds in one of the dead girls. That seemed to rule out a premeditated attack, and yet what else could it have been? What else could've done such a thing to those girls?

A couple hours after Charlie had arrived at the hospital, two police detectives pulled him aside from the hospital bed and spoke to him.

Since he'd received word from the head surgeon, all Charlie could focus on was his poor daughter, who was sure to be devastated by the news of her friends' deaths. He wasn't sure she could recover from that, knowing that it had taken Bella much effort to move on from the Cullens. And now Jacob had thrown her away just as Edward had. He was going to have to do some talking to.

The detectives suspected it was a premeditated attack besides Charlie's contrary, albeit conflicted, beliefs. They pointed out the lack of witnesses and surveillance footage; the security cameras in the first floor of the parking garage had been torn down. Haphazardly but efficient. Mere minutes before the attack. And they couldn't find an obvious culprit through the CCTV. Additionally, the detectives believed the perpetrator was not alone. When Charlie told them Bella hadn't made an enemy out of anyone, that she was a quiet girl that had just moved to Forks for her last two years of high school, they inquired about any strong cases he might have made enemies of in his years as police chief. He had no answer, shocked by the idea that it could be his fault Bella was in the hospital, with little hope of things returning to normal and her overall prognosis speculative. "I don't know," he told them for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

He agreed to contact them as soon as Bella woke up, so they could get information on her attackers as soon as possible. But he could tell Bella was in no condition to talk to the police and relive her attack. Even though he knew of the importance of brevity, especially when so many days have already gone by and the attackers were likely to have left state lines by now, Charlie made a silent promise to hold them off for as long as he could.

He was a father first, a police chief second.

"Charlie?" Bella said, her voice faint and raspy at the end. It felt like sandpaper in her throat. She cleared her throat, tried again. "Dad?"

He struggled for words. In that moment, he wished Renee could be there to comfort Bella and fill the silence with inane but soothing chatter, but that wasn't possible. Renee couldn't leave Florida. She had to take care of herself and her unborn baby.

"What happened? Bella said, speaking through air rather than with her voice.

"Jesus, Bells. I can't—I don't think—" His voice was choked.

"Angela? Did she make it?"

"I'm sorry, honey. She didn't."

Bella nodded, her face scrunching up into a pained expression. "Jess?"

"She died too."

Charlie leaned closer to wipe Bella's tears with the edge of her blanket. They had begun falling down her cheeks, with no sign of stopping. She sniffled. "It's all my fault."

"I'm sure that's not true, Bells. You can't blame yourself for what happened."

Bella stayed silent, suddenly outraged by the fact that she couldn't confide in him, not completely. The truth was far more horrifying than whatever Charlie could have come up with. Her case was hopeless. She feared losing Charlie now more than ever. Bella cringed at the unbearable vision of Charlie's dead body.

"How am I?" she asked, trying to use as little words as possible.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

Bella lightly chuckled, breaking off with a wince. The laugh had broken out with a bubble of spit hitting her bottom lip. Her arm twitched to wipe it off, but she settled for licking it up before it slid lower. She began biting her lip out of embarrassment. Realizing you have no functioning hands makes you feel as useless as a baby, and this she felt magnified by Charlie's presence.

Charlie sighed. "You came in with a severe concussion, a fractured jaw, a lot of bruising around the face, especially your right cheek. Nothing that can't be healed within a couple of weeks."

At Bella's downward glance to her hands, Charlie struggled with the bad news. "Your hands though... They'll take longer to recover. The doctor...he says your right hand won't recover completely. There was some nerve damage. Not a lot, but enough to make things a little difficult for you. At least for the first few weeks as you get used to... it."

"At least it wasn't both hands," Bella whispered with a light smile.

Charlie chuckled lightly. "Yeah. That's true. Although you're going to have to learn how to be left-handed." He couldn't help but admire Bella for how well she was handling everything, humoring him even when it was herself she should be concerned about.

"Yeah." Bella's lips twitched into a wider smile, which quickly fell as she remembered that she shouldn't be able to laugh, not after the destruction she'd caused.

Angela and Jessica should be here, alive, instead of her. She could only imagine how devastating the news would be to their families. Angela was always telling Bella about the 'little rascals' her younger brother and sisters were, how they often made her want to tear her own hair out and simultaneously dote on them. Jessica was an only child. She could only imagine her parents' pain. The loss of one's child, a parent's legacy, was a distinctive pain. The thought brought tears to her eyes. She nearly inflicted that kind of pain on Charlie. And Renee.

"Should I call in the nurse?"

She nodded, overwhelmed with guilt.

He pressed the button for the nurse. The voice on the other side of the speaker assured them a nurse would be sent up momentarily. Charlie stayed at her bedside, rubbing her shoulder soothingly. Neither could think of what to say to each other.

"I should tell you," Charlie began after a while, "Jacob's here. And Billy."

"No," Bella voiced clearly with an edge of conviction.

"You don't have to see him. Just thought I should let you know."

Bella blinked in relief. She couldn't imagine what to say to Jacob, nor what he could possibly have to say to her. She didn't want to complicate things anymore. It's best if they stay apart; safer for him. When the doctor came in, nurse in tow, Bella couldn't resist wishing it were Carlisle there to pick up the pieces.

The doctor spoke to her in a blunt manner, which she normally didn't mind, except for the lack of bedside manner. She didn't speak. Didn't ask questions. The doctor's lingo was vaguely familiar since it wasn't her first trip to the hospital, not by a long shot, but it still confused her already muddled mind. The doctor said the disorientation was normal. Then, as if to add insult to injury, two detectives came by the next day for her account: _How're you coming along? That's good to hear. This will only take a few minutes of your time. Just give us as much as you can, no detail is too small, anything helps_. When they asked for a description of the attack, she lied.

"There were three men that I can recall," she began slowly, eyes cast down to avoid looking into anyone's eyes. "They were standing in the corner of the parking lot, by the stairs, and it was too dark for me to see much. We didn't think too much of them since they weren't calling out to us or anything, but we did try to get around them faster. We were alone, you know, and we were just looking for Jessica's car. And then..." She paused as she struggled to form a new story despite the barrage of horrifying images attacking her mind. "Then they grabbed us from behind. The man that grabbed me, he shoved me to the ground, kicked my face. And then, I couldn't tell what was happening exactly, but I heard Jessica screaming. Angela tried to help, but the man that had grabbed her, he just shoved her down and started punching her. Without stopping... just non-stop. The man who attacked me, he was wearing a backpack, and he pulled a baseball bat out of it and handed it to the other guy to hit Angela with. I tried to stop them, but they were too strong." She broke into a cry that felt fake despite her genuine guilt. "I should've fought harder. I should've paid more attention to them."

One of the detectives, clearly the more sensitive one, wore an expression of sympathy. Despite the nudge her partner gave her, she said, "You couldn't have done more. Don't blame yourself for trying."

Even though she wanted to protest her words, Bella felt soothed by them.

The other detective seemed hesitant to believe her wholeheartedly, but he understood that heavy trauma could do funny things to one's memory. He suddenly felt guilty for questioning her story as if she were a suspected murderer, especially when it was very clearly a mindless attack on three unsuspecting girls. A stroke of sympathy arose as he thought of how the lack of details would mean her attackers would likely go unpunished. _For now_ , he mentally added; he believed the law always found a way of bringing justice.

But the law couldn't help Bella. And although it felt like she was aiding Victoria and Laurent by lying for them, she knew it was necessary to throw the police off. She didn't want any more death on her hands.

That night, after Charlie had left her hospital room in search of a vending machine, Jacob snuck in. His sneakers squeaked on the linoleum. He went up to the first bed he saw, the woman's face concealed by auburn hair.

"Bella," Jacob whispered anxiously.

The woman turned abruptly at his closeness. "I told you I want chocolate. Nobody likes vanilla," she loudly complained.

He bumped into the bedside table, knocking the vanilla pudding cup and plastic spoon down. "Shoot, sorry. Sorry," he said in a strained whisper, as his towering body stooped low as he tried to spoon the spilt pudding back into the cup. The woman continued to grumble about the pudding.

"Jacob," Bella asked aloud, mildly surprised to hear his voice. When he appeared from behind the dividing curtain, she shook her head with a half exasperated, half curious expression. _What are you doing here?_ she seemed to ask.

As Jacob inched closer towards her, she took in his appearance. His long black hair had been cut short and large muscles protruded from under his jacket. It made him look older. _I guess he wins; he's earned back just enough to make him older than my thirty-eight years._ Joke aside, his appearance made her heart pang with longing and regret. Even though Jacob was nothing more than a friend, an _ex_ -friend, his presence reminded her of when Edward had paced around her hospital room the past year, and the reminder picked at the wounds Victoria and Laurent had inflicted on her.

"I wanted to apologize for ending things the way I did. For scaring you that day in the garage and endangering you. It wasn't right to treat you that way, but I wasn't myself." He put his hands on the rail at the foot of her bed, shaking his head. "Don't look at me like that. I know how that sounds, but it's the truth. What happened, that's all on me."

"Doesn't change anything," Bella whispered.

"I know. You're right, of course."

"What happened to you, Jake? Why'd you let Sam pull you into—"

"Sam didn't _pull_ me into anything, Bella. I was wrong about him. He's not the bad guy. I didn't understand before. I couldn't have. I thought he was the problem, but he was always trying to help us. I was going through these changes, my outburst that day was part of it, and if it weren't for Sam, and the pack, I'd be lost."

"They're the _pack_ now? Are you trying to tell me you joined Sam's _gang_ because you had trouble getting through puberty?"

"What! No. There is no gang."

"Hey, keep it down over there! Some of us are trying to sleep," called a voice from the other side of the curtain. It carried off in disgruntled mumbles and murmurs.

Jacob took a deep breath and tried again without much difference. "No. That's not at all what I'm trying to say."

"You're not making any sense."

"I know," he relented. "I really am sorry. I wish I could tell you the reason for all this mess but I can't."

She couldn't be sure, but Bella thought she heard Jacob mumble 'damn the treaty.'

"Have you ever had a secret," he began abruptly, gesturing with bulky arms and thick hands, "you were bound to keep, one that wasn't yours to tell. And you kept it not just from loyalty, but because it became just as much your secret as theirs?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Bella, come on. Humor me."

"No, I don't know what you mean," she denied, though the lie seemed to fall flat. Even to her own ears.

"Stop lying. I know that you do."

"No, you don't. You say you understand, but if you did you wouldn't be saying any of this. You wouldn't be pushing me to reveal whatever secret you seem to believe I'm keeping. And neither would you speak to me in riddles as if you wanted me to figure out yours."

Jake sighed. There was a long pause. "It's just that it would be so much easier if you knew. And what drives me crazy is that you already know. I told you everything when I didn't know any better."

"Stop this, Jake." The topic had grown tiresome and his insistence on revealing his secret felt threatening to her own.

Jacob's forehead wrinkled at her dismissive tone. He was quiet for a moment, looking at her with knowing eyes. "There's another reason for why I'm here. Without going too much into it, I wanted to assure you that we can protect you. And Charlie. We know who did this to you and it's only a matter of time before they make a mistake..."

Bella laughed without humor. "I don't think you can."

"We can. We know that there's two of them, one male and one female, just like the Cu—the family that left last year."

Bella stared at him blankly, trying not to give herself away. How did he know about any of this? When there were no vampires around for any suspicions to be confirmed without dying at the hands of one of them. He'd mentioned changes, the physical kind, and there was no denying he looked different. He was freakishly tall and muscular. His eyes no longer held their innocent warmth and instead appeared distant and in turmoil. But how does hitting an abnormal growth spurt connect to his apparent knowledge of vampires? Or to his confidence that they'd be able to protect her and her father? _Like he stands a chance against a vampire_ , she mentally scoffed. And he speaks as a collective, which means Sam and the others believe as he does. Billy must be in on this. Though how he could condone and feed this delusion was beyond her. Then again, he didn't seem above it last year when she first started dating Edward.

Bella rubbed the bridge of her nose. The headache was getting worse. As much as she wanted to connect the pieces of this incomplete jigsaw puzzle, she needed to push him away as she should have done from the beginning.

"No. You can't know. You don't know." Bella shook her head furiously. "The police told me there was no footage, not even anything suspicious through the CCTV. And you weren't there, so how can you possibly claim to know anything?"

"You're right, we weren't, but we followed their scent. It's appallingly sweet and almost feels like it's burning your nose."

Jacob's hands were right beside hers, and Bella flexed her left pinky out to touch his hand, suddenly hit with the suspicion he was a vampire. What she felt perplexed her. He wasn't ice cold, and that was a huge relief, but he was abnormally hot. Almost feverish.

She only meant to touch his skin out of suspicion, but he seemed to interpret her action differently because he began stroking her cheek.

"Are you okay, Jake? You're burning up." Had he actually been sick?

He ignored her. "Just focus on getting better. And don't worry. We'll take care of everything."

Bella shook her head, exasperated with his insistence. Then, it was like a dam burst.

"Stop it, Jake! You can't do anything. You and your pack aren't some superhero squad, so stop trying to be."

"Bella, please. I know you can tell that I'm telling the truth."

"The truth is Angela and Jessica are dead and my attackers are nowhere to be found."

"We can help you," he insisted.

"No," she growled resolutely. "Get out."

"Bella—" he began, cutting off abruptly as Bella glared at him with anger. "Get out," she repeated.

Seeing that she was vehemently against his help, Jacob shook his head and clenched his fists. "I'm really sorry for what happened." He kept his eyes low and rushed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The pack would continue to track the vampires, regardless of whether Bella approved or not; telling Bella was just a courtesy. Even though things ended badly between them, he would do everything he could to make sure Bella and Charlie stayed alive.

"Annoying, persistent fellow that one," commented the neighboring patient through the divider.

Her words hardly registered to Bella. In her head, everything—memories and words and imaginings—spun and twisted in an attempt to form plausible explanations for Jake's strange behavior. All it did was worsen the headache that had been lurking patiently in her forehead up until a few moments ago. She pressed the button for the nurse.

When she came ready with a syringe, Bella turned her head to the side and blinked away salty tears as the pain medication began to take effect. Her eyes drooped and as her eyes fluttered closed she imagined Edward in the plastic chair in front of her, stroking her hair and humming her lullaby. "Sleep now," he whispered in his velvet voice.

With a faint smile, she did.

~XXX~

Bella spent her Spring Break inside the confined space of her hospital room. The weeks that followed her hospital discharge were plagued with guilt and uncertainty. She didn't attend Jessica's and Angela's funeral—their parents had decided it was best to mourn together.

She had mulled the idea of attending for days, considering how blasphemous it would be to mourn them without owning up to her culpability. How could she stand before their families and remain silent as they wailed ( _Why her? Why my little girl?_ ) and looked at her and Charlie with a mix of pity and jealousy?

What made her vehemently decided against attending was fear. She didn't want to know whether it was closed or open casket. She didn't even dare to formulate a guess. She didn't want to feel the burning stare of the town's residents as she sat within close range of the caskets with Charlie and the afflicted families. She didn't want to be forced into a hasty retreat after seemingly hours of tenuous pretenses, when the church's walls seemed to warp over her head and the corpses jolted up from their coffins and cried out pleadingly to her, demanding to know why they'd been killed. The nightmares convinced her she wasn't ready. And she wasn't sure she ever would be.

A week after the funeral, two weeks after the attack, Bella returned to the hospital to have the pins, splinters and cast taken off her hands. The doctor had urged her to try opening and closing her hands and wiggling her fingers. He watched her movements, slow and pained as they were, to see how well she'd healed from surgery. As she raised her hands in front of her, they trembled as if they were an old woman's hands. She felt everyone's eyes on her, especially Charlie's. She tried her best to ignore them. Her hands, as the doctor had warned, struggled to clench into a fist. It was as if she had sat on her hands for hours till they tingled and fought against any movement. A sort of rigor-mortis that matched her desire to be dead.

Even her fingers looked different, the tips angled differently, no longer straight, and the bones protruding. She let her rage against Victoria force her fingers to obey the doctor's commands. By the end of her session, her cheeks were sticky from tears, and she had a headache from the strain.

She thought of what Jacob had said in the hospital. Maybe they could actually protect her and Charlie. Maybe not. Either way, she wasn't going to count on them for protection.

She looked down at her right hand, furling and unfurling it in front of her. No, it was up to her to protect herself. No one else. The question was how, though it seemed obvious that she would have to trick Victoria to come to her on her own terms. Right into a trap. And she'd have to start a large-scale fire, one too large for them to escape. The spray can and kitchen lighter had worked, to an extent. Laurent was still alive, and Victoria had been able to disarm her.

The fire had to be started somewhere that wasn't populated, somewhere Victoria would suspect she'd find Bella. Somewhere as secluded as the Cullen house. At the thought, Bella's invisible wounds began to flare up in pain. She was remiss to destroy the only tangible place left to both soothe and feed her sorrows. But it wasn't like she was going to make it out alive. She had to make sure Laurent and Victoria were extinguished from the earth.

Perhaps it would be suitable, almost poetic, that her life would end where it had started: the Cullen home.


	5. Quick Bite

Chapter 5: Quick Bite

Charlie hurried to the cruiser, pulling his dark weatherproof jacket over his head to protect him from the chilling downpour. His slouched shoulders aggravated his aching back. _Why couldn't there be more specialized centers closer to Forks?_ The long drives were becoming more of a bitch with age. Any more of this and he'd have visit another clinic for himself. Not that he was really complaining. He wanted to make sure Bella recovered completely, and if that meant driving all the way to and from Port Angeles twice a week, so be it.

Meanwhile, Bella waited patiently for him at the entrance of the Port Angeles rehabilitation clinic. The overhanging roof created a sheen of water in front of her, almost as if she were standing behind a small waterfall. Several drops struck her pallid cheeks and darkened the fabric of her converse shoes, but she didn't move. Even though she didn't like the cold and rain, especially when they reached underneath the heavy jacket and thick grey wool mittens, she could pretend the tears on her cheeks were raindrops.

The cruiser pulled up a couple feet away a moment later. She quickly sprinted to the passenger door, her right arm curled over her head in a makeshift umbrella. She made it safely inside with only a few wet splotches on her jeans. She couldn't say the same for her jacket.

Thankfully, Charlie had turned on the heater, so she took off the bulky jacket before the water droplets ran down onto the rest of her clothes. She raked her hands through her hair, shaking it to dispel some of the cold rain, as Charlie pulled out of the small parking lot.

"So," he began, casting a cursory eye at faraway traffic as he pulled into one of the lanes. Bella glanced up.

"How's therapy coming along?"

"Fine," Bella sighed. "Um, it's helping," she corrected, perking up her voice.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, um, my hand doesn't hurt as much anymore. It's getting stronger too."

"Good," he said, nodding absentmindedly. At the green light, he executed a U-turn. "That's good."

After several therapy appointments, the fingers on her right hand no longer felt a slight slip away from becoming unhinged, like they were ready to pop out of place. Her fingers were slightly shorter now that they'd been reset, but their strength was gradually coming back. Her hand still trembled, especially when aggravated or distraught, as if it belonged to an old woman.

Whenever this thought slipped its way to the forefront of her mind, it recalled a painful memory that she would fervently attempt to squash down. It wasn't so much a memory as it was a nightmare that clawed its way out into broad daylight, similar to the unsettling dream she'd had on the eve of her 18th birthday.

It always started the same, with Bella rushing down a green field to greet her Grandma Marie. Nostalgia settling in at the sight of thick grey hair and matronly arms. But then the joy would shift to unease as she noticed their clumsy gait and glinting hand-me-down ring were eerily the same. She would turn her gaze from her hand to her grandmother and notice the panic written across her wrinkled face. Her eyes were often red and swollen with tears, but other times she appeared expressionless, unreadable. And then they would both raise their hands as if to scratch the back of their heads, only for Bella to feel the stripped flesh and congealed blood of a gaping bullet wound and see it for herself on the old woman, whom she came to realize was herself, as she drifted away, calling out to Edward, who was nowhere to be seen in the suddenly empty, barren, colorless field of their meadow.

Almost always, she'd wake up with choking gasps, frozen under crumpled sheets with the sinking feeling of dread, her heart pounding in her ears.

She hardly ever remembered the full dream. Only snippets would arrive to her uninvited throughout the day, shrouded in black and out-of-focus, giving them the quality of a vandalized photo album. Like some of the pages were stuck together, creating sizable gaps in the sequence, and what few pictures were visible no longer held the innocence they once did.

"You think you'll be ready to go back to school tomorrow?" Charlie asked, facing straight ahead at traffic.

"Yeah," Bella replied, jerking her head up with a brief smile for Charlie.

He nodded, scratching the thick stubble growing around his jawline. "I guess it's a good thing you'll be graduating soon," he shook his head.

"Mm," she answered, rubbing her temples.

"I can't believe it. My little girl's all grown up."

Bella glanced at him. She knew Charlie was worried about her now more than ever. He no longer hung his gun belt at the entrance of the house, something that hadn't happened since Charlie first put a gun in her small eight-year-old hands and she'd been scared straight with the first cracking shot. Now he hid his guns and ammo in a locked safe beside his bedroom dresser. She knew this only because she had searched for it once.

A particularly trying day in which her physical therapist had been insufferable and Renée had called to ask her how she was and at her short responses proceeded to talk about the new baby— _What do you think about the name McKenna? Or maybe Katherine? Huh, d'you like that name, precious girl?_ —slipping into baby talk at the end. Bella felt bad for not being able to share her mother's joy.

She was glad her mother was making her life in Jacksonville, but she couldn't help the wave of jealousy. Not for the attention on her new half-sister, but for her mother's ability to move on. She wished she'd inherited some of her flightiness; she was very much like Charlie in this way.

That day, she'd scoured everywhere for a gun. Opening drawers and cabinets, searching for the keys to the safe she was sure was guarding it, and pushing aside furniture like a rushed burglar. Only to put it all back and start dinner like it had never happened.

She never did find the key, but she supposed that was a good thing.

The drive back to Forks was an hour long, the sky dark and obscure, so Bella found herself dozing off. She propped her elbow on the door and held her head up as she slept. It wasn't the fitful sleep she'd learned to live off on during the week, but rather a wakeful rest. The banal noise of wheels spinning steadily down US 101, a reminder that she was still alive. The steady pitter-patter of the rain and the mechanical whir of the windshield wipers were also part of the soothing soundtrack.

Charlie pulled up in front of the Carver Café. The old, quaint building with walls slightly warped like wet cardboard normally seemed warm and cozy, but it was public, and right now that was the exact opposite of what Bella wanted. Inside were cramped tables lined up along the center of the room and worn booths that hugged the walls. It was buzzing with regulars, locals from town, so Bella knew that she would be met with familiar wary stares. She resisted the urge to sink into the car seat and tightly clench the arm chair with reluctance. Biting her lip with steely determination, she slipped out of her seat and closed the car door.

As Bella stepped into the diner, the hostess's face fell with sullen recognition. But she quickly changed tactics when she spotted Charlie making his way over. "Oh, hey, Charlie. How ya doin'?" Her voice held the raspiness of a heavy smoker.

"Nothing much, Deb. Just hungry," he replied somewhat awkwardly, hands on his hips like some begrudged cop stopping a neighbor for speeding. His eyes roamed over Bella's face, but her eyes were cast downward.

"Well, come on in. We'll get you two taken care of."

She plucked some menus from behind the register, glancing at Bella with a wary expression of inquiry. Bella looked away as if she hadn't noticed her stare. Wading between the tables and filled seats, Bella noticed the hostess wasn't the only one staring expectantly at her.

This didn't escape Charlie's notice, and he pointedly shot them a hard glare. They instantly turned their gaze away.

Bella crossed her arms over her chest, eyes pointed at her feet, as she followed Charlie to a booth in the back.

She slid all the way in to a spot that wasn't torn and white with exposed stuffing. Her back faced the front of the restaurant. She wasn't sure if that was a blessing or a curse.

A waitress promptly stopped by and engaged in friendly small talk with Charlie.

Bella grabbed the menu so she had some excuse to not make eye contact. She didn't feel particularly hungry. Her breakfast of eggs and a granola bar sat like a heavy stone at the base of her belly. Without focusing on the menu items, she waved her hand over the menu and rested her pointer finger on a random spot. _Reuben sandwich and curly fries it is._

The doorbell rang as another customer stepped in. Their waitress turned to greet her. "Welcome to the Carver Café. I'll be with you in one second, sweety. Feel free to sit anywhere you'd like."

There was no reply, but just like that, she sensed it. Danger in the air, sweet and seductive. Even with the rattling and shuffling from the kitchen and the sound of clinking silverware and chewing smacks, Bella became attuned to it. She turned her head slightly to look over her shoulder. It was meant to be brief, no real substance behind the action, but she found herself linking eyes with Victoria.

Her jaw dropped and released a breath as if it had been gut-punched out of her. Victoria walked past their booth without glancing at them, but Bella knew it was her. And that despite her apparent ambivalence towards them, Victoria's appearance was purposeful.

She could spot that head of orange-red waves even if it were hidden in the busiest crowd of only redheads. There was a distinctive shape to it, nicely round and curved at the neck, and her hair was rich in color as if butterscotch candy had been melted into cherry-flavored pop. She was deadly nightshade incarnate; no killer should be as beautifully deceiving. How could anyone stand a chance against her?

Bella followed her with wide eyes, her hands laying uselessly in her lap.

Victoria picked her seat two booths down. She had a panoramic view of the dining area, so she had no trouble keeping her eyes on Bella. She smiled innocently and clasped her hands together in front of her, crossing her legs under the table. _Like a proper English woman_ , Victoria smirked. _Respectable._

Bella watched as Victoria visibly took a deep breath, shoulders rising and nose flaring as her lungs expanded. Without realizing it, Bella held her own breath. _Would she actually massacre the whole restaurant?_ There was no doubt that she could.

The first few seconds of her attack would be soundless, Bella decided. Sucking the blood of those closest to her, no one would know how to react. Most would miss the action entirely, too distracted by dinner and conversation to notice the silent turmoil nearby. But gradually they'd begin to notice and go rigid with surprise. Suddenly caught up in some unreal circumstance, like extras in a movie production they were unaware of. After that, several would react with a short, dignified _oh!_ while someone, most assuredly the fake blonde woman with the snub nose and mommy gut loudly scolding her snot-faced toddler, would release a high-pitched scream that had the same effect as a starter pistol. They would all clamor their way to the foyer in a stampede, only to find their exit blocked by the blood-smeared vampire. Victoria would deflect their advances with casual, violent ease, savoring the fear in Charlie and Bella's brown eyes, whom she'd save for last.

Victoria returned her stare, her pink lips stretching back, revealing a row of brilliant white teeth. The distinct dip down the center of her thin upper lip was the duplicitous bow on an eerie gag gift.

Bella's eyes slipped over to Charlie and the waitress. They returned her gaze with an expectant glare. Bella blinked, realizing they had asked her a question. "Um, a Rueben sandwich and fries."

"And to drink?"

"Uh, I'll have a coke?"

"You want your usual, Chief? The House Special and a Rainier tall boy?"

"Yes, that works. Thanks."

The waitress left with their order. Charlie's cellphone buzzed in his jacket. He quickly pulled it out, shrugging apologetically to Bella.

Phone to his ear: "Hey Harry... No, I'm at the diner with Bella. We just got back from Port Angeles... Yes, she's getting there, almost a full recovery. The doctor gave us a copy of her x-rays and most of the breaks and fractures have healed over. She'll be strong as a racing horse in no time... No, I'll probably stay in tonight, but we can go fishing early tomorrow morning." He paused, tilting his head to one side as if to ask her if that was alright. Bella nodded. "We can stop by the shop for some fresh bait and more line, I haven't been able to restock since our last fishing trip..." Charlie continued, looking around the place absentmindedly.

Bella's skin was clammy with apprehension, her right hand trembling so fiercely she tucked it under her legs, hoping the weight of her legs would still it to submission.

She wished she could give off a distress signal to someone, like you would a familiar face in a dark, laser lit nightclub with a stranger's grubby hands sliding down your ass, which had happened to Bella one night not too long ago when she'd let Mike sway her into joining some of their friends at a frat party out of town. And just as it was then, she could rely on no one but herself.

Bella watched the waitress talk to Victoria with increasing panic. If only that woman knew that she was taking orders from a murderer.

When the waitress stepped away, Victoria turned her gaze back to her.

This was an excursion she hadn't been planning on, but now that Bella's cast was off she wanted to reiterate the fact that she wasn't through with her. This was just part of the torture, and the amazing thing was all she had to do was show up in front of her.

Sitting there amidst a room of strangers, looking into each other's eyes, it felt as if they shared an intimate secret.

Bella could hardly taste her meal and she felt self-conscious of eating in front of Victoria, who insisted on keeping her eyes on her the whole time. She was also perturbed by the sight of Victoria taking bites of berry cobbler, which her dad often ordered for dessert. Victoria hid her disgust for human food very well; if Bella didn't know any better, she'd say she enjoyed it.

Midway through, Victoria slipped into the cramped corridor that led to the bathroom.

"Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom," Bella murmured, slipping out of the booth without a glance towards Charlie.

She followed Victoria down the hall, walking past storage rooms, the bathroom, and the door that led into the kitchen, toward the sound of a door slipping closed.

Balling up all her anger inside, Bella flung open the door Victoria had just disappeared behind, and stepped out into the parking lot.

Victoria was stooped over a mulch bed flooded with thick tangles of brush and overgrown weeds, retching and dry heaving.

Bella halted instantly and quickly deflected her gaze, oddly disturbed at the sight of her throwing up. She was a murderer, and yet she'd somehow managed to elicit sympathy from her. But it's hard to view someone as a monster when they look like a pretty college-aged woman in need of medicine and beauty sleep.

Bella shuddered, an icy draft piercing her through her coat and jeans, and quickly pulled her hair down around her neck. Her boots scuffled the loose gravel, venturing closer to Victoria, appraising her with watery eyes that stung from the biting cold. Bella noticed Victoria was wearing worn sneakers—not barefoot like the last time she had seen her. A disturbing thought trickled in. _She didn't buy them, she snared them._ Whatever affinity she'd developed for Victoria, it was buried deep and forgotten.

Victoria straightened back up, wiping off the venom trickling down her lips. She inclined her head towards Bella, a predatory smile creeping out. It was a stark contrast to the forlorn expression she'd worn in their last encounter.

Bella returned her gaze, a deep V furrowing her brows, as she mustered the courage to speak. She noticed her eyes were a blue-violet. _Contacts_ , she realized.

Before she could formulate a sentence, Bella saw a little girl skipping by with a Barbie mermaid doll in one hand and her mother's hand in the other. She was wearing a toothy grin, which slipped down in awe when she spotted Victoria.

"Mommy, look, it's Ariel," she whispered sensationally, tugging her mother's arm.

"Lisa, honey, come on. Let's leave them alone. You can't just go up to strangers, honey."

"Not a stranger, Mommy. It's Ariel, the little mermaid," she informed in a light, confident tone.

She inched closer to Victoria, who stooped low to the girl's level. Bella couldn't help but take a step forward.

"Is the human world everything you thought it be?" asked the little girl.

Victoria huffed out a laugh. "It certainly is, Lisa," she replied in a sweet, honeycomb voice.

Lisa's mouth dropped in awe, starring after her as her mother sheepishly guided her back to their van, shooting back an apologetic smile.

Bella returned a tight-lipped smile that was more a grimace.

Victoria stayed low on the crunchy gravel, dropping her head, deep in thought as the grey van drove away.

Her lips twitched. "You know, when I was human, my beauty was always relegated to 'witchy.' A lowly harlot was how others saw me. Never mind that I hardly ever wore anything other than the colorless drabs of a housemaid and scarcely broke any rules... Even the children knew not to approach me as a familiar commoner. My red hair and green eyes, it was winning the genetic lottery, rare as those traits are, but all it got me was extra beatings."

Bella watched her silently, disarmed by this bit of information. "Edward had green eyes too. When he was human."

"You don't say?"

Bella clenched her hands into fists inside her jacket's pockets, suddenly upset that Victoria could be making up some lie to catch her unawares and implicitly pull information about the Cullens from her. Even though the natural color of Edward's eyes could hardly be considered information, Bella found it disconcerting that she'd revealed something that felt strangely personal.

"You could end this at any time. And—and yet you've killed my friends. You've left me alive. I'm standing right in front of you and you haven't finished the job. Why?"

Victoria stood up and turned her gaze towards Bella. "Don't pretend to be stupid. You know my answer to that already."

Exasperated, Bella's voice grew louder. "I get that you want me to pay for what happened to James. But why the random, pointless attacks when you could just kill me and be done with it? This is—" _Fucking crazy_ , she finished in her mind.

Victoria nodded, prompting her to continue, but at Bella's silence she spoke. "I want you to suffer. I have an eternity of pain, and you have tasted only an inkling of what I have planned for you."

Bella shook her head, her mouth twisting into a disdainful scoff. "This can't go on forever. I'm human. Half a century is the most you'll get out of me."

"Then I'd have to change that, wouldn't I?"

"What? You mean, change me? No. No way."

"If I recall correctly, that's not what you told Edward that night under the gazebo," Victoria taunted.

"Prom? You were there." Bella struggled to reconcile the fact that Victoria had been watching them unawares, especially when Edward was a mind reader, the sense of violation churning her full stomach. "That was different. I wanted to be like him so I could join him as his equal. As his mate." She ran a trembling hand through her hair, sounding out of breath with the last word, as if it took an enormous amount of effort to say. "What's to say, what if I—I can easily go home and kill myself. What of your revenge then?"

Victoria didn't answer. Instead, her eyes shifted to something, or rather someone, behind Bella.

"Bella? There you are." It was Charlie, briskly walking over to them, large paper bag in hand. "You were gone a while. Figured we could finish eating at home." He held up the bag by way of explanation.

Bella didn't meet his eyes. She was busy looking at Victoria, who had pointedly turned her gaze to Charlie, letting the threat sink in. Of course, in the heat of the moment, she'd almost forgotten that suicide wasn't an option. Not as long as her parents were alive.

Charlie ran his eyes over Victoria and subconsciously puffed out his chest and rested his hands on his hips in an imposing manner. "You wouldn't happen to be related to the Cullens, would you?" he asked. Despite his sharp tone, he nervously massaged his mustache with his fingers, furtively glancing at Bella for answers.

"The Collins?" Victoria asked, feigning ignorance. "I wouldn't know who they are."

"You passing through?"

"Yes, sir, I am. Heading down to Arizona to visit my parents. Just thought I'd grab a quick bite."

Charlie's stance eased a bit when he heard this.

"Arizona, huh," he said, glancing Bella's way. "You're a long way from home."

Victoria nodded, clasping her hands in front of her, her shoulders straight and high, the way one does when they've caught themselves slouching and correct their posture. Like something right out of the English novels Bella loved so much. At least that's how it looked to Bella. The action seemed habitual, but she couldn't be sure.

During all this, Victoria had replied to Charlie: "Yes, Seattle has been my home the last few years. I didn't visit my parents much when I left for college, and now my job is taking up most of my time, but I didn't want to put off seeing them any longer. I could have taken a plane, but being me I just had to make a road trip out of it."

The ease with which Victoria conducted herself in front of her father was disconcerting to Bella. Wasn't it supposed to be hard for vampires like Victoria to be civil in the presence of humans? Even the Cullens would suffer through casual interactions with humans, especially Jasper. Their shoulders would tense and their expressions visibly morph into severe lines, all hard edges and flaring noses.

It just didn't seem possible for Victoria to seem so human, and yet it was. It made everything about the Cullens feel more like a boldfaced lie.

"I'm staying at the motel off Woodstill Avenue. Just for a little while. Forks seems really interesting..."

Charlie nodded. "I can vouch for that, but I'm a little biased. You going on any of the tours?"

Unnerved by her tenuous thoughts, Bella interrupted Victoria's reply without realizing it. "Dad. Let's just go."

Charlie stopped to look at her, his bushy brows burrowing with silent questions, then nodded. He turned to Victoria. "Maybe we'll see you around," he said in farewell.

"I hope not, _Chief_ Swan."

Charlie chuckled. "Right. Take care now."

Bella was appalled by how Charlie seemed to enjoy their banter, as if Victoria were an average _human_ woman incapable of murder passing through town.

As they walked back to their car, Bella glanced over her shoulder. Victoria caught her eyes. Her arms were crossed but her expression playful. She even sent a wink her way. Bella's footsteps faltered slightly, and she was never more grateful for her dad's cruiser than she was at that moment. _Breathe,_ she reminded herself. _Just breathe._

"Hey Bells, what's wrong? What happened back there?"

Charlie's face appeared more rugged and aged with worry as he watched her from outside his door. He also couldn't help feeling slightly agitated. First, she'd disappeared from the diner, and then she'd tactlessly interrupted a nice conversation. What else was she going to rush away from? But he held back his anger, knowing that Bella was just a little out of it nowadays, and with good reason. He could see the dark circles under her eyes.

"I," a light scoff escaped, "I just want to go back home."

Bella could see several eyes staring at her through the restaurant windows. There were new arrivals stepping out of their cars in the small parking lot. Doors slammed, people spoke, footsteps drew closer than was comfortable.

She hoped no one would try greeting her or Charlie. If she were driving her own car, she would've sped out of there as soon as she got into her truck, but she wasn't allowed to drive. Doctor's orders. Apparently, her license was to be suspended for a few months in case she developed seizures or something. She didn't think her head injury had been _that_ bad, but Charlie wasn't willing to let her take any chances.

Charlie placed one hand over Bella's, which she hadn't realized were shaking intensely. He didn't say anything, and Bella wasn't sure what she would have said if he'd spoken.

There was no need for words, and the simple contact comforted her. When he retracted his hand to start the car, Bella's eyes followed it to the steering wheel. She wanted the comfort so bad, but it seemed ridiculous to place so much value on his rare displays of affection when he still felt like a stranger to her. She had never been close to him, and the distance had only grown with the past few months, dark as they were.


	6. There's No Going Back

Chapter 6: There's No Going Back

Going back to school was worse than Bella had expected. For nearly a month, the thought of returning to school had been brimming below the surface of her thoughts.

She knew that pushing herself through recovery, steely-eyed despite the frustrations that came with rehabilitating an infuriatingly shaky, nerve-damaged hand, would make attending school that much sooner. Perhaps foolishly, she had put too much stock into the idea that things would go back to normal for her, that the dark cloak of mourning over the town would have been lifted by the time she returned for class. Because as soon as she arrived Monday morning—really, as soon as her truck's loud engine was within earshot—conversation resumed as if word of Angela and Jessica's death had just been revealed by local news.

To some degree, Bella had expected just as much. It was the reason why she had decided to drive with a suspended license, even though she had promised Charlie the previous night that she would walk to school, that, no, she didn't _need_ a ride. She had had enough of riding shotgun in the police cruiser; it messed with her mind every time since she felt she should find herself on the other side of the steel partition. Killing her two friends, however tangentially, and lying to the detectives felt monstrously criminal; part of her wanted to face punishment.

Still, as guilty as she felt, there was nothing more that she wanted than quiet, if not peace. She hadn't even stepped out of her truck and she could see how the parking lot crowds turned to look at her en masse, their curiosity almost predatory.

Bella rested her head on the steering wheel, trying to muster the courage to get out of the car, which was difficult since she had a hard time convincing herself that resuming class was necessary. School, shmool. How did it help her against two conspiring vampires?

With the slow, wary movements of begrudging compliance, Bella grabbed her earphones, slipping the wires under her jacket and putting the buds in, as a way of blocking potential conversation. She threw her backpack over her shoulder, slamming the door open and closed behind her.

Heading in the direction of her first class, she kept her head down, watching as her shoes and the bottom of her jeans got spattered by the puddles of last night's rain.

The barely concealed whispers and head-nods in her direction shot a spark of agitation through her tired limbs, but all she did was wrap her jacket more snugly around her.

 _Poor Bella._

 _I can't imagine going through something like that, and then having to return to school on top of that..._

 _Are they ever going to find out who killed them, maybe I should ask her?_

She made no detours on the way to first period, Calculus, and only glanced up once she sat at her spot in the back. As the classroom filled with people, she could feel multiple inquisitive eyes skim over to her hunched form, but as soon as the lesson began she knew it wasn't them she needed to be concerned about.

Ben was looking at her from across the room, eyes muddled with questions.

Immediately, Bella untucked her hair from behind her ears, letting it unfurl into a dark curtain.

She felt terrible for pretending he didn't exist, especially when Angela had meant so much to them, but she didn't want anyone to see a way in, especially when there was nothing she _could_ say without the risk of sounding like a liar. She was sure that the main reason why the detectives hadn't probed too hard was because they couldn't see her as anything other than a victim, not her ability to turn a story on the spot.

Several times, she found her jaw ached from gritting her teeth so hard. She could picture Charlie jokingly saying, "You shooting lasers with those eyes?"

When the bell rang, she flew from her seat, loudly bumping into the desk and tripping on one of the legs of the chair. Beet-red from the embarrassment, she rushed to the next room of horrors.

The rest of her classes occurred in a similar manner, with her sitting rigidly in her chair, coiled for the jumpy spring she'd make to head to her next class before Mike or Tyler could approach her. For the most part, her teachers left her alone, having already discussed makeup work in a conference the previous week, and that made the day a little more bearable. Instead of going to the cafeteria for lunch, she helped her calculus teacher grade papers during his free period.

At the end of the day, Bella hurried down to her truck for a quick escape. She gave herself one moment to control the wild emotions coursing through her, resting her cheek on the cold steering wheel.

A loud rapping sound at her window startled her upright, and she linked eyes with Mike, who was awkwardly shuffling on his feet.

She stared at him for a beat, and he gestured for her to open the window. She began cranking it down only after she realized he wasn't going to go away, even if she asked nicely.

"Yeah, Mike?" she asked, exasperation coloring her tone.

He scratched the nape of his neck, suddenly feeling that his words would be inadequate and fall short of comfort. "I—I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry for what happened. It must have been... awful." He paused. "Do you think they'll ever find those... those monsters responsible?"

Bella blinked, her lips sealed shut from the blood caked onto her lips. She'd been biting them too hard.

"It's just that there hasn't been any news since their funeral and everyone in town wants to know what happened to them. And Jessica—God, I can't believe she's dead. We left things off on a bad note, and I never got to apologize or fix things with her."

"I'm sorry," Bella murmured, forcing herself to meet his eyes. Blue, although they appeared an opaque, stormy grey in that moment.

"What did they look like? I mean, we should be keeping an eye out for them. Not sitting around doing nothing while they get away with killing our friends," Mike fumed.

Bella knew the anger was not directed at her, but she still felt defensive.

"That's public record. I already told the cops everything I saw," she said dismissively.

"Bella, come on," he snapped.

He stuffed his hands inside his jackets and shrugged in a challenging manner. "There's no way you didn't see anything. A bunch of faceless guys in hoodies? You must have seen something. A tattoo. A scar."

Bella began cranking up the window.

"Bella? What the hell?" Mike protested, jerking his hands out of the way.

Once it was closed, she started the truck with hurried motions. She fumbled with the keys a lot, her tremble worsening, and she cursed loudly at her ineptitude. Mike began tapping on her door more insistently.

As she tried driving out of the parking lot, Tyler's van stopped in front of her, blocking the exit.

She felt a vague sense of horror as she watched the driver's side door open.

Tyler gestured for her to roll her window down. She could tell what this was about, but she rolled it down anyway. Three cranks, just enough to not be entirely rude.

"Hey, Bella. I'm sorry to ambush you like this. But I couldn't find you at lunch and...Please, Bella. Just tell me this: Did Jessica die in a lot of pain?" He spoke haltingly, struggling for words. At Bella's silence, he cringed. "Please, Bella," he repeated. "You have to know who did this. It couldn't have been random..."

Bella glanced into the rear view mirror. There was a lineup of cars behind her already. A couple had started honking. She noticed Ben was watching them from the other side of the parking lot with interest.

Tyler glanced at the cars with a growing frustration. "Why won't you say anything? I mean, you didn't even go to their funerals. Did they not mean enough to you? Do you know something about the guys who attacked you or something? What—"

"Tyler, I really wish I knew more, but I don't. The cops are doing everything they can to find them, you have to trust that they will. I'm sorry I can't do more."

Bella turned her gaze away from Tyler and maneuvered the groaning truck around his van with brash turns. He jerked back and stared off at the rusty red back in disbelief. Ben ambled over to him, sharing a heavy shake of the head, and they boarded the van in shocked silence.

In the clear, Bella huffed, wondering how she could ever go back to Forks High. Ben wasn't likely to approach her, but she wasn't sure Mike or Tyler wouldn't find some way to guilt her any more than she already was. She wondered why Tyler had asked her about Jessica, specifically, and suddenly she realized that Lauren may have been right after all. Jessica and Tyler had been secretly dating.

Would Mike or Tyler, one of their friends, try questioning her again? Would their parents try to say something to Charlie?

All she could think about was how their accusations spoke directly to her guilt to the point she felt compelled to confess the truth to them. She was carrying the answers to why such a savage attack took place against two innocent girls, yet she couldn't reveal the truth. She was bound to keep the Cullen's secret just as she was bound to tell the truth to her dead friend's families and friends, which left her in a painful position with no clear solution.

It was like the heat of the earth threatening to escape from a long dormant volcano, she was trying very hard to quiet the lava-hot scream building inside.

On her way home, driving down Main Street, Bella caught sight of a small gas station.

In a split-second decision, she pulled up to one of the stations. She stepped out, pulling back the haphazardly-strewn tarp from the trunk and hauling the empty 5 gallon gasoline container down to the ground.

Before the incident, Bella had promised Charlie she'd get it filled, but since the _incident_ there hadn't been much time for that. Right now filling the container wasn't a fulfillment of that promise.

It felt odd for her to be in a state of heightened alertness when the world seemed calm and unbothered, the slight sway of skinny branches and the familiar sounds of faraway traffic lending to its ghost-town feel.

Bella grimaced as the strong fumes wafted under nose. Shaking her head, she put the gas pump back into the station and screwed the lid back on the gas container. "This won't work. Victoria would be able to smell this from miles away."

Bella knew it wouldn't be easy to make sure Victoria and Laurent went down in flames. She finally understood the breadth of Alice's words as she told her that the only sure way to kill a vampire was to tear them apart and _then_ burn the pieces.

A montage of incendiary weapons ran through her mind: a flamethrower ( _stocky and obvious_ ), a blowtorch ( _only a tad more effective than lighting an aerosol spray_ ), gasoline ( _odorous and repellent, again_ obvious), Molotov cocktails ( _just maybe_ ). The last thing she wanted was to call attention to the fact that she was on the offensive.

If Victoria wasn't already at the Cullen residence when she arrived—the other likely scenario spelling out her death—she would have to set a trap for her. Nothing could trigger Victoria's acute senses and send her halfway across the state before she's had her chance to end her.

Bella watched as a couple of cars drove past the gas station, wary of being noticed. She figured Charlie would be working late at the station, so he wouldn't be tearing anyone's door down anytime soon, but the last thing she needed was for someone to call him with vexing concern: _"Hey, Charlie, I just saw Bella driving past my house, and I figured you should know, I think there might be a chance she's heading out of town..."_ She couldn't have Charlie pulling up in front of the Cullen house and running towards a blazing fire for her, especially when Victoria could leap at him at any moment, wring his neck out with a simple jerk, and sink her teeth into him.

The gruesome image filled her with a vicious, self-sacrificing intensity, the momentous weight of which caused a plan to slip into place, the resounding _click_ of a lock sliding into the catch.

On the spacious kitchen counter were cases and cases of beer, wine coolers, and liquors—anything for a late-evening party with the pals. All those bottles...Bella wasn't good at anything that involved throwing an object at a target, but with so many at her disposal, she wouldn't need to get too close to Victoria. If she tied a rag around the neck of the bottle, wet the makeshift wick with isopropyl alcohol, and hurled it at her as soon as Victoria tried closing the distance between them, unknowingly making herself a bigger target, she had a chance. Flammable as vampires were, she didn't need to get fancy with the weapon. The element of surprise, she hoped, would increase the odds of her succeeding.

Once she paid for the gas, she rushed over to her truck, impatient for the dangerous brawl to begin.

When she'd first bought a case of beer with a fake ID, she felt a surge of excitement as she turned away from the counter with a hefty 18-pack in one hand. Thrilled at having gotten away with it and at the prospect of having something both reckless and socially-acceptable to help cope with the hollow pain that frequently seized her chest. Who knew that it could possible end up saving her life?

A heavy stone of uncertainty remained despite the adrenaline rush. Rows of evergreen trees whooshed past her on the drive, the foliage so thick that she wouldn't be able to spot Victoria or Laurent even if she were staring intently through the crisscrossing branches. _They might already be there waiting for me._

The uncertainty of _when_ they would find themselves in a standoff, if it were soon enough that she'd be caught off guard or hours down the road, made her pause just long enough to stall the upwards thrill of conviction.

The goal was to kill Victoria and Laurent, and though they weren't human, it was still two lives that she'd be taking, if she succeeded. That was no light objective. But she was determined to take the route with minimal losses.

If she managed to kill both of them, not only would Angela and Jessica be avenged, but they would be unable to harm any more humans. Or the Cullens, as she was sure was also their intent.

The drive felt momentous, the two reels of endless green on either side a long, elaborate hall towards an initiation ceremony of sorts.

Bella pulled up in front of the Cullen house, parking the truck haphazardly on the wet grass. She turned off the ignition, taking a deep breath as she looked into each of the windows, peering holes into the quiet, twilight ambiance of the house. She looked out at either side of her, searching for any hint of Victoria or Laurent. A deer was grazing close to a red rose bush on the side of the house. Its dark, oblique eyes stared at her from across the garden before springing away with graceful leaps.

Bella's shoulders fell before she registered the relief. Victoria wasn't here.

She stepped out of the truck, closing it lightly as if afraid to break the silence. With the full gasoline container dragging her arm low to the ground, a small lighter in one of her back pockets, she hauled it across the grass and up the porch steps. Setting the container down, she tried turning the knob, but it didn't click open. Her eyebrows sank low, perplexed. Did Victoria try locking her out of the house?

She glanced back at her truck, scratching the nape of her neck.

She thought of driving it deeper into the woods—in case she had a chance of escape, she wanted to be able to escape detection from the fire trucks and police crew lineup that were sure to arrive; Charlie couldn't know—but she didn't want to risk finding Victoria, unprepared.

With hurried movements, Bella lifted her ponytail, pulling out the bobby pin holding the short, thin hairs above the nape of her neck. With it, she picked the door lock, a trick that Jacob had shown her one time after they'd inadvertently locked themselves out of his garage. The lock clicked open.

She slipped the pin back into her hair and slowly pushed the door open.

She cautiously stepped in. There was no sign of _them_. It probably wouldn't be long before they came back.

Bella quickly set about laying her trap.

~XXX~

Laurent raced through the forest, leaping over steep hills, frothing streams, and fallen moss-covered trees, startling deer and other wildlife with each upwards bound. He wore an expression of ease that matched his graceful movements. He held a brown knee-length fur coat over his shoulder and it waved behind him like a cape.

His lips twitched as he neared the outskirts of Forks. He was pleased with himself, a small smirk playing on his lips, for he was the bearer of valuable information that was sure to please Victoria. And he never felt more formidable than when he was working with other powerful individuals.

His first life had been marked by ceaseless tailing and self-invitations to vogue parties.

Walking behind prosperous individuals and their horse-drawn carriages and slipping into opulent soirées and evening balls in the best attire he could buy, Laurent associated himself with members of the French court, where he would later be offered a position of high standing.

The king's court had been a significant, lavish platform for his ambitions to escape life as the overlooked middle-child of a financially-embarrassed family, but the swirling-room discussions of personal accounts and matters of state, like the hum of a bee, led him to sweeter prospects.

Boris, a secretive man with a retinue of obedient servants and soldiers hailing from the Russian court, caught the attention of wealthy aristocrats, who were either in awe or jealous of his aura of sophistication and power. The first night Laurent saw him and the way people gravitated to him, he had promptly left the princess he'd been dancing with to meet the towering, pale curiosity as he prattled on about Russian winters to the small crowd that had encircled him.

Striking his attention with spirited repartee, Boris became amused with Laurent's hovering attention, and took him under his wing, taking him to secret gatherings in the city, where decadence and degradation met in hazy shadows.

When Laurent had inquired about his strange ways—the fact that he never touched an ounce of food and often restricted his activities to the darkness of night—Boris invited him into his carriage and moments later his temporary residence by the countryside. With a smirk, Boris revealed his secret, and as soon as dusk arrived, he took Laurent to the underground basement of the large estate, where his screams would be unheard and his mindless, newborn feeding frenzy could be satiated without traceable scandal.

Reborn, Laurent's second life was marked with attempts to associate himself with vampires he gleaned to be important—and more formidable than Boris, whose contentment with a life governed by human affairs suddenly seemed so deserving of ire or inattention.

It was why he joined James's coven. And even though he was deceased, Laurent saw the same sadistic power in Victoria, who yearned to decimate the second largest coven known to vampires, starting with the pretty pet they abandoned. If they succeeded, there was no doubt he would be able to join the most powerful coven of all: The Volturi.

Just the idea made his legs pump faster than industrial machines.

Victoria was only a few miles away, crouched inconspicuously on a tree branch several meters high from the soft ground. She was listening intently for any sign that those pesky wolves had followed her up state lines.

A couple days ago a trio of wolves had chased her out of town, but she was quick to evade them by climbing up a cedar tree and scampering away on intersecting tree limbs. The wolves clearly thought of themselves as protectors of Forks, but despite the benefits of a pack mind, they were too gullible to be considered much of a threat, _tsk-tsk_. Why she even managed to get in a good kick at the muzzle of a grey wolf, the runt of the litter, perhaps younger than the rest. The mash blow to its wet nose had caused it to waggle its tail and turned its head with the juvenile shake of a confused twit.

Amateurs, that's what she found herself dealing with.

Even Edward, who'd chased her across Texas and Mexico, was no match for her. There were a few instances where he had nearly caught up to her, when she'd been focused on constructing possible escape routes and he had been able to anticipate her next move through her thoughts. But after she'd realized that by leaning into her instinctual gift of flight she could effectively throw him off her trail, she let the shifting wind guide her serpentine path. For fun, she'd conjure up an image of Bella bloodied on the floor. Almost instantly his racing steps would push along faster. But he never caught up to her, his footfalls lost in the wind that blew behind her fleeing form until they were gone altogether.

After a stormy night, relying on instinct and what little she had gleaned from James' tracking expeditions, she followed Edward's faint scent trail, and she deduced with some degree of certainty that he'd tried following her deeper into Central America, possibly down to the southernmost tip of South America.

How out-of-tune his kind were with their nature that his sense of smell deceived him.

Then again, his coven always seemed more in tune with each other.

Victoria found herself resenting James' distance, though mention it to her face and she'd tear you apart for suggesting ill of him. Mates weren't perfect, but they were steady rails on which to lean on as the unbearable world stared back at you, day and night, promising to test your patience and will.

Her eyes hardened at the sound of quick footfalls, another vampire, and she crouched into a ball against the trunk, the crack of wood undetectable in the strong breeze. _Ah, Laurent,_ she realized at the rush of woodsy fragrance that reached her flared nostrils.

She turned her gaze north and watched as he came into view. The dark curly hair and fancy attire hinted at the assured enjoyment of his stay in the Denali wilderness. It seemed as if Irina had flattered him too much during his stay with them. The 18th century-style ruffled shirts have long been outdated; there was no way a modern vampire, especially a _cousin_ of those human-loving wastes, would entertain such a hideous shirt in these modern times unless she was his mate. Then Victoria spotted the fur coat held against his back. Maybe Irina was not as oblivious to his fondness for frills and lace-up shirts and surreptitiously offered cover up.

Smirking, Victoria flung herself away from the gnarly yew tree, landing a couple yards away from him on supple feet.

Laurent automatically set into a defensive crouch from the surprise. Realizing there was no danger, he smiled in greeting with a light bow.

"Hello, Victoria. I'm glad to see the wolves haven't succeeded in killing you."

Victoria huffed from annoyance. "Never mind such asinine greetings. Now, tell me, what have you found out about the Cullens?" she inquired with a flourishing wave of her hand, circling around him with a burning gaze. "Do they have anything on Edward?"

He frowned at her impatience. "His whereabouts are unknown to the others. None of them know what he is doing presently."

"Hunting me down and failing is what he's doing. I lost him in Texas a few nights ago, but if he hasn't gotten the scarred one to join him, he doesn't seem particularly concerned with capturing me. He's on the wrong continent for God's sake." Perhaps they had a falling out; how fortunate for her. She was glad to hear that he was working alone. She hadn't been sure.

Laurent nodded in acknowledgement. "Their unnatural diet fails them at every turn."

A snarky grin rose on Victoria's lips. Laurent's eyes were red, revealing that he had forsaken that diet as soon as he was able to extricate himself from the Denali's attention, and the fact amused her.

"What else do you have on them?" Victoria asked with keen interest.

"The rest of the coven has split up as well," he began with a smile. "Carlisle and his mate reside in the forest north of the city of Ithaca. He's working nights at the city hospital, and also is a guest lecturer at Cornell, so they are separated from each other most of the time. Jasper and Alice are staying in Biloxi, Mississippi, temporarily to do some research on her past. Apparently, she doesn't remember any of her human life at all."

"I can't conceive of why anyone would want to do such a thing. Our human pasts are best left forgotten," she mused aloud. "Continue."

"Emmett and Rosalie are currently traveling through Europe on their fourth honeymoon." He continued, watching as Victoria quirked an eyebrow, her lip curling up with hatred at the idea of her mate's killers enjoying a vacation, far away from retribution. "I would suggest we wait till they return to mainland USA before we strike an attack against them. As distracted and oblivious as they'll be, we don't want to risk discovery by the Volturi, who guard over all of Europe."

"Of course," Victoria agreed. "Our best bet is heading to Biloxi immediately. We have been very fortunate to have not attracted attention from the seer, but we don't want to overstate our luck."

"My thoughts as well. Which begs the question, have you killed their human pet yet?"

"No," she answered.

"Forgive me, but don't you think we should rid ourselves of the human before we move forward? To keep her alive is to jeopardize what we are trying to accomplish."

She snapped her head back to look at him.

Despite the growl that threatened to escape, she spoke slowly and haughtily. "Do not speak to me as if I were an imbecile. I realize how cumbersome it will be to keep her alive any longer, but how can I end her when she's hardly felt an ounce of the pain her existence has burdened me with?"

Laurent sighed. "I see." He resisted the urge to shake his head in contempt. Here she was pitying herself and too consumed by revenge to do anything about it, to see beyond death and destruction into a lush landscape of power and respect. _Perhaps I shouldn't have bet my chips on her_.

"Don't think I'm not aware of your ire. But don't you forget that your working for me. And if I say Bella must stay alive, then you be a good pet and obey my wishes."

"Pet?" he inquired, barely concealing the red-hot flare of rage that word incited. "Is that what I am to you?"

He paused, measuring his words carefully.

"A pet doesn't help you commit a double murder. A pet doesn't spy for you. What I am is a partner. If all you desire is a pet, then I suggest you stop at the human girl. Do not incur the wrath of a large coven if you are not one hundred percent committed."

Victoria remained silent for a second.

She'd known the instant she spoke that her words would be met with contention. It was, after all, a careless mistake to tell the tool boy exactly what he was to his face. But he did have a valid point.

This past month Victoria had resumed tailing Bella around town and in Port Angeles during her clinic visits, and in stalking her she found her murderous intent muddled by the sight of a human so deeply, quietly saddened. While it pleased her to have been the one to cause her pain, Victoria saw hints of her human self in her. It had escalated to the point she had fleetingly thought that killing her was akin to suicide. That killing Bella would murder a part of her that made her the woman she was today.

But Laurent's words reminded her that it was foolish to hesitate over the death of a human, especially one that was instrumental in killing off her mate. If revenge was what she desired, she needed to stop watching the girl and start focusing on taking the Cullens out. One by one.

"You're right, my dear Laurent. Forgive me for having insulted you, but I desired your honest opinion, and the truth so often spills out in the heat of the moment."

Her attempt to save face worked. Laurent's shoulders relaxed, familiar with these kind of antics. "Does this mean we will kill the girl?" he asked.

"Yes," Victoria agreed. A hint of hesitation snuck its way through.

There was a brief silence as the two considered how to proceed from this point. Victoria looked him over and, realizing it was best to reaffirm their "partnership," opted to make a light-hearted comment. "Was that a gift from Irina?" she asked, referring to his fur coat with a jerk of her chin.

"Yes. She has been good to me. She insisted I take something of hers to remember her by."

Victoria's face scrunched up hearing the last detail. Some women were just so sentimental. When she had to split up from James for anything, like last spring when he'd decided to hunt down Bella on his own, she never pushed her affection onto him to the point of being clingy or showed discontent at being separated unless it was to caution him. In her opinion, even mated vampires had to learn to be independent. But those vegetarians had turned as weak and insecure as the humans they covet.

"Shall we head over to the house to convene on the matter of the Cullen's human pet?" Laurent asked, sliding into his heavy coat.

Victoria sighed, closing her eyes for a brief second. "We shall."

They were a few miles away from town, but they covered that distance effortlessly.

The sky had darkened to a navy blue and there was a cloudy haze from the dewy mist that clung to the air. It felt cleansing to their skin. And the promise of rain was welcoming. Still, it messed with their sense of smell since the different scents bled together. They didn't mind. It wasn't necessary right now. The wolves weren't around. And neither were any fresh meals.

Just as they reached the outskirts of town, merely a short distance away from the house, they detected a familiar scent. It was Bella.

They could see her clearly through the glass walls, their reflections peaking back at them. She was sitting at the white grand piano on the first floor. Her eyes were cast downward to her lap, where her thin fingers rested in an interlocked cage, but there was a hard glint to them that Victoria recognized as determination.

The human never ceased to surprise her. The fact that Bella was there in the house, waiting for Victoria to arrive, ready to challenge her despite her inferiority, was a testament to her courageous spirit. Instead of running to false security, like most humans, she had stood her ground.

Victoria was beginning to see why the Cullens had taken her into their... _family_. Until they'd left her defenseless, of course.

With a slight shake of her head, she tried dismissing her sudden preoccupation with her. _It's a shame they abandoned her; she would've made for an interesting newborn._

In the golden glow of the overhead lights, Bella appeared almost otherworldly to her. A creature not quite like any other.

"It seems dinner has served itself," Laurent stated, his red eyes glinting as he made out her pulsing, blushing form.

Victoria didn't answer.

She watched as Bella stood up from the padded stool and walked over in front of the fireplace. One hand, she noted, was wrapped in a dark towel. Or was it soiled as to appear dark?

Victoria sensed a trap. Her body slipped into a crouch, one hand seeking purchase in the tree trunk at her side, the bark cracking with pressure, as if hiding herself from view. Every part of her being was urging her to leave and never return, as if Bella posed a threat to her. Despite the knowledge that Bella was human, and therefore incapable of inflicting lasting damage to them, Laurent's wounds notwithstanding, there was an inkling of doubt settling in, nameless and perplexing but ever pervasive.

But Laurent began walking towards the house at a human pace, and she forced herself to follow.

* * *

 _Author's note:_ _Don't forget to let me know what you think. Reviews make me update faster._


	7. Molotov

_Author's Note: Hey guys, finally got another chapter for you. I had it mostly written weeks ago, but I kept going back and making edit after edit. I wanted to make sure any progress between Victoria and Bella felt natural. So be sure to let me know what you guys think. Enjoy!_

Chapter 7: Molotov

Bella sat in front of the fireplace, cradling her bandaged hand, lockjawed from the effort to quell the lingering spell of nausea. She was full of emotions, and the copper smell of congealed blood wasn't helping to calm things down.

A part of her was wistful. Walking through the house and visiting each room, she had replayed several warm memories. Esme's gracious smile, and how it had lit up her face whenever Bella awkwardly accepted her offer of a hearty meal. Emmett's dimpled grin whenever he succeeded in making her blush, even when the joke or innuendo earned him a clapping backhand from Rosalie, who doled out the punishment with a reluctant grin.

They _almost_ made her abandon her plans.

But beyond the sadness, there was a quiet fury brewing in Bella's thoughts: How many of those precious memories were staged? How many secret glances and plans had escaped her notice? Was it all for their own amusement, without regards to her or her sanity? Did they ever love her at all... did he?

An impulse ran down her spine, and Bella hastily left the comfort of the cushioned piano stool. Waving of the ceaseless doubts, she braced for another.

Quiet solemnity and a cold chill seemed her only present company, but her fearful anticipation of Victoria's arrival stirred her blood.

She was constantly whipping her head around, jerking her chin up with every creaking floorboard and each peripheral glimpse of swaying tree branches, expecting telltale signs of her tormentor. The bright hair that flickered with the wind as if it were a sentient ghoul and lithe; pale limbs that carried the strength for unimaginable devastation.

She was afraid, but she knew that things couldn't continue this way, this constant look-over-your-shoulder, fear-for-your-life sensation.

As much as she wanted to avert further violence, Bella knew that the only way to make sure the rest of her friends and family remained safe was to end Victoria. It didn't matter that they would never know she'd sacrificed her life for them.

But Victoria wasn't working alone. Just how was Bella going to manage this without dying?

The fireplace was unlit, a dark chasm amid the grey, woodsy stone frame, so that it appeared like a gaping mouth.

Bella bent down with the black iron poker, prodding the wood into a pyramid at the center as if starting up an outdoor grill. If only circumstances were as banal as a day spent outdoors.

She pulled the lighter from her back pocket and sat still on her haunches, feeling the weight of the cheap plastic in her unbandaged hand.

How utterly frightening it was to realize that her fate rested on the speedy flick and burn of a small handheld lighter. A gust of wind, an unsteady hand, and the whole thing could fall apart. She was envious of Victoria for her lightning-fast reflexes and abilities. Maybe then creating a booby trap would feel less like play pretend and more like the serious matter it was.

Bella wasn't sure she hadn't deluded herself into thinking she had a sporting chance against a vampire.

Certain only of her intentions, she peeled back the rag that bandaged her wounded hand.

Earlier that evening, biting down on a kitchen rag to muffle her cries, she'd dragged a kitchen knife across the palm of her hand. Then she had run her bloodied hand across the dark mahogany tables and grey stone counters in the hopes that by spreading out her scent she'd manage to overwhelm Victoria's senses.

Perhaps the smeared blood could conceal the smell of alcohol or gasoline, or at the very least distract Victoria from those things by appealing to her sense of blood lust. Force her to take pause like Bella had been forced to do when she realized that she'd inadvertently created a nauseating concoction for herself, her plans evaporating so that she was all instinct, yanking the damp fabric from her mouth and wrapping it around the wound to staunch the bleeding, only mildly covering up the scent of fresh blood.

Holding the soiled rag out in front of her by one fraying corner, Bella ran the lighter along the bottom edge.

After a few seconds the flame caught. Wisps of grey, stifling smoke whizzed out, snaking upwards in front of her face like ghostly ribbons.

She tossed the bloodied towel into the fireplace, stepping back to watch the towel twist and curl into a shriveled black mass on top of the pile of wood.

The smoke caused a cough to tickle along the back of her throat, but at least the amber glow provided some much-needed light around the room.

Outside, the navy blue sky was blackening. Nightfall was slowly arriving, and no moonlight, no stars, only fast-moving clouds, illuminated the house and the nearby woods and river.

The firelight created vast, oblong shadows around the furniture but its red glow reflected off the grand white piano. Still, the house felt vacant. Haunted.

Here, she was going to fight Victoria—although the word _fight_ is used loosely given that a human is hardly capable of inflicting harm on a vampire—to some extent, her methods were akin to the torches and pitchforks of earlier superstitious hunts: foolish and futile. Here, there was a strong possibility she would get killed, and die for nothing at that.

But just the possibility, the faintest uncertainty, allowed room for hope to grow.

Grabbing the plastic container of alcohol, which she'd pulled earlier that evening from one of the bathrooms—a remnant of when the Cullens had stocked up the house with first-aid items for her, the danger magnet she was—Bella squeezed the bottle over the flame.

A burst of orange-red flames caused a heat wave to wash across her face. Once the bottle was empty, she dumped it inside the fire as well.

Bella took slow, careful steps toward the kitchen. Each second she tried harder to muster the courage to follow through on her plans. Each second her bravery dwindled.

She'd skimped out on taking action for months, always holding out for the far-off possibility that Victoria was done with her, that she had left Forks, or the Olympic Peninsula altogether. But that had been cowardly, wishful thinking.

Arriving at the kitchen doorway, Bella was able to appreciate her preparations.

On the kitchen island were an assortment of bottles, green and black and transparent, sometimes short and stout and more often skinny and tall. Inside their glass necks were alcohol-soaked rags.

Molotov cocktails, improvised on the spot.

As a precaution, Bella had also dispersed some prepped bottles across each floor of the house. Victoria could appear to her at any moment. And when she did, Bella would have a weapon, or rather the raw materials of one, within reach.

Candles were lit and placed strategically throughout the house, so that if Bella found herself forced to flee from the first floor, where most of her incendiary weapons were dispersed, or happened to lose the lighter in the midst of an attack, she would still be able to grab hold of something flammable within a fleeting moment's time.

As Bella stepped forward into the secluded kitchen, a dark blur appeared in her peripheral, instantly raising the hairs on her arms.

Her downcast eyes spotted a long shadow shifting over her shoes in gradual increments.

Victoria was inside the house, though she hadn't heard any telltale signs to warn her of her presence. No sound of doors slipping open or of incoming footsteps.

Bella grasped the door frame with unfeeling hands, the combination of smoke, blood, and fear suddenly knee-buckling.

Her heart raced in her chest, an incessant pounding in her ears, despite her outward collectedness.

Whether it was out of renewed fear or a Pavlovian reaction to her presence, she wasn't sure; but it was certain that she believed Victoria to be a harbinger of pain.

"Victoria," Bella said, her voice unexpectedly strong, though her back was towards her.

"And company," Laurent added, his voice echoing from deeper inside the house, by the stairwell where he was leaning casually.

Bella flinched, almost whipping around in a disturbed flurry, afraid to give danger her back.

This was exactly what she had feared: Victoria did not arrive alone.

Laurent frightened her in a way that Victoria never could. His shifting allegiance—warning the Cullens about James, only to join Victoria in her revenge mission months later—was frankly disturbing. Even more so than James' sadism.

Alone and unloved, the strength and willpower to battle enemies born from her past was flimsy at best.

Devastating memories flitted across her brain: Jessica's body being thrown haphazardly across the parking lot; the alarming crunch as her body dented a nearby car; Laurent as he crushed her hand with his foot.

Even though she had held the lighter on and sprayed his face with the aerosol can and sent him staggering backwards—a pained growl escaping through his livid grimace—her attack had not achieved significant damage.

She could not hope to achieve more with throwing a molotov cocktail at him. But if she could just stun him long enough to trap him and Victoria inside a massive inferno of a house, there was a chance she could succeed at finishing them off.

Like the familiar adage: Go big or go home—home meaning she was dead.

As if her damaged hand remembered its assailant, it began to tremble at her side. Her other hand reached across her body to hold it still.

Though she had refrained from turning around only a second ago, too scared to look into their beady red eyes, Bella did so now, slowly taking in the dangerous company.

Victoria was leaning against the white grand piano, her arms crossed over her chest. The low hem of her jeans and the curve of her hip resting against the piano lent to that air of audacious nonchalance she always carried with her.

The red of her eyes and hair was magnified by the lapping flames inside the fireplace, where the wood blocks crackled and hissed as they glowed with embers.

Part of Victoria wanted to flee from the house, sensing a setup, but she had already agreed with Laurent to kill Bella.

The fake smirk died on her lips as soon as she met Bella's eyes, seriousness straightening her smooth, seraphic features.

Though vexed that Laurent had had the gall to challenge her plans as if he were her equal, Victoria was curious to see what he would do.

Laurent stood at the foot of the stairs, his splayed hands joined at the tips below his chin like a reverent appraiser, bright red eyes calculating.

"You've been expecting us, haven't you, Bella?" a slight pause as he casually took in the warm, scattered lighting, "I wonder, what does a human have to gain from seeking out the attention of two vampires? Do you wish to bargain for immortality? At least, I hope that has been your intention. It would be considerably foolish to come here without acknowledging the risk of crossing our paths. Tell me, _Bella_ ," he drew her name out like a precious tune, "do you desire death?"

Without glancing away from Bella's wide chocolate eyes, he asked, "What do you say, Victoria? Shall we give her what she wants?"

Bella's hand slid from the door frame to the edge of the marble kitchen counter, which was hidden from their views. The other tightened around the lighter, determined not to let it slip out of her grasp.

Her hand scrambled for a bit, and coming up empty, she broke into a sweat. Resisting the urge to turn towards her left with expectant confusion, she glanced to the side and spotted one of the bottles by the sink one yard away.

So close, and yet so far away. She couldn't get any closer to it without alarming Laurent, and she wasn't sure she should risk revealing her plans just yet.

The indecision rooted her to the doorway.

Laurent and Victoria gazed at her dispassionately, unimpressed. Like Bella, though, Victoria was internally struck with doubts: Should she kill Bella? Or perhaps Laurent, for being the insufferable power-pleaser he was?

Of course, logically Victoria knew there was no contest. As much as Laurent annoyed her, it was his help that would allow her to fully avenge her mate by destroying the entire Cullen clan, his help that would keep her distracted from the loneliness. There was nothing that Bella could do for her. At least, not alive.

"We shall," Victoria answered, barely a second after Laurent voiced his question, her jaw tight with displeasure.

Bella didn't know who moved first but all of a sudden Laurent was halfway across the floor to her and she was launching herself towards the kitchen sink away from him.

The sideways lunge was quick on her part, but what slowed down Laurent was not Bella's desperate grab for the lighter, it was the sight of dozens of bottles gleaming back at him from the kitchen island.

Their presence baffled him. _Surely there must be some meaning to this,_ he thought.

Against her better instincts, Victoria pushed herself away from the piano and flashed over to where they stood inside the kitchen. _What's holding him?_ she thought.

Bella pushed the lighter against the rag stuffed inside the bottleneck, the small flame flaring along the alcohol-soaked fabric.

Laurent turned to look at her, realizing her intentions, and prepared to launch himself at her.

Bella fought the urge to close her eyes, and hurled the bottle at him, trying to imitate Phil's baseball pitch from those times she couldn't escape joining him and Renée at one of his practices.

The room flared into brightness so that she was blinded for a half-second before she could tell if she'd succeeded in nailing Laurent.

Victoria jumped away from the large burst of flame, her eyes wide with alarm.

The flare dissipated as quickly as it had started, and Bella's hopes sank as she realized Laurent was mostly unharmed. The bottle had hit his side, the contents spilling on his pant leg and smothering the flame before it had a chance to grow.

Bella stepped back and reached for another bottle, not stopping to gauge his reaction.

Laurent flashed over to her side just as Bella tossed another at him. The brief flash moment was enough distraction to sprint past him.

She ran up the spiraling stairs, steeling herself with the hand rails as she made each jerking step towards the top.

Her eyes caught sight of her goal—the gasoline container that rested on the second floor landing—and she pushed herself to close the distance as fast as possible.

She reached into her back pocket for the box cutter.

She came very close to jamming the gasoline container open with her knife, but Laurent caught her by the shoulder.

An action born from desperation, Bella twisted and aimed a backwards kick with her right leg, but her left shoe slipped on the stairs so that she tumbled down a few steps on her front, landing on her knees, the wood groaning under the force of their weight.

She recoiled with a gasp, twisting her body around as she realized that Laurent stood directly behind her, his large hands reaching out towards her.

He gripped her arms tight, lifting her up with ease in front of him despite her struggles. His grip was tight; if he squeezed any tighter, he would break her fragile bones. Her feet barely touched the steps, and the sensation of being airborne made her moan in terror.

She knew fighting him was futile. If only she could get to the top of the stairs, if she could just slash the container open and light it up… though the main thought that registered was that she had undeniably, pitiably failed.

Laurent could bite into her jugular at any second, and she will not have succeeded in killing neither him nor Victoria.

In the next second Bella found herself falling backwards on the steps. Her elbows and hips broke the fall.

A loud, volatile sound rattled her ears: splintering wood and cracking stone, as if there were a rebellious group tearing down a town square statue right underneath her.

Bella steadied herself on the steps, glancing down to see Victoria slam into Laurent and their clashing bodies tumble down the stairs in a shocking blur.

Bella instantly got to her feet, resisting the urge to stare at the brawl that had broken out until she'd put more distance between them, and rushed towards the upstairs landing.

Once there, Bella gripped the rail, trying as she did to make sense of the scuffle occurring below her feet.

Their colliding bodies were a shocking blur.

Her eyes could scarcely begin to make out what was happening; there were white flashes of quick punches and wiry escapes, but it was difficult to decipher who was coming out on top.

Victoria's hair was most noticeable, and so following that, Bella was able to ascertain, to some degree, what was happening.

Victoria was leading an attack, slamming into Laurent, who blocked her advance and shoved her away with a powerful kick. Their clashing bodies tumbled into the walls and whipped down the stairs, creating a trail of splintering debris.

Terrible, violent noises shocked her ears. A sound like crashing boulders, an avalanche at a snowy cliff side, reverberated through the hall.

The flash of opportunity coursed through her, and raising her unsteady hand, Bella slashed into the gasoline container with a grunting cry.

Jerking the blade out, a splash of gasoline hit the top steps.

A heaving torrent of gasoline gushed out. Each wet lug of foul-smelling gasoline coated more and more of the stairs with its flammable liquid.

Bella stepped back, glancing towards the battle that waged below.

For a second she had the crazy impression that Victoria was defending her, but then she turned, sneering as she stalked up the steps towards Bella.

Laurent laid haphazardly at the bottom of the steps, cradling his arm as if wounded. His face was scrunched in pained outrage, a ferocious growl escaping his lips.

Turning around, Bella grabbed the vintage wrought-iron candelabra from the hall table—the same one that had been upturned all those months ago, when Victoria had only begun trying to spook her. She hurled it down the stairs now, the ornate, solid metalwork and the lit candles creating a loud clamor that followed a half-second after the _whoosh_ of the catching flame. An inverted falls, red and bright.

Twin screeches of pain reached her ears, which both frightened Bella and flooded her body with victorious exaltation.

Victoria leapt away from the steps. Realizing that her jeans had caught fire, she ripped off one of the pant legs as if it were a wayward mutt that had wrapped its muzzle around her leg.

Stepping back away from the stairwell, towards the grand piano, Victoria watched as Laurent flung himself through walls and tables, one hand waving at the flames that climbed his face while his dismembered arm was being consumed by flames on the steps. Victoria could still hear the metallic _pop_ his arm had made when she'd ripped it from its socket.

Her nostrils flared, her body shaking as she followed him with her eyes. She didn't understand why she stopped him from killing Bella, why she fought him when it went against all logic, why she was letting him die.

She could easily push him into the outdoor pool if she wanted to save him, but instead she chose to watch. A vindictive move but one that felt vaguely satisfying.

She turned her body towards Bella, her legs easing into a crouch.

Now that Laurent was gone, targeting the Cullens on her own was out of the question. Killing Bella would have to suffice. Yet the hesitation and predatory affection that had been festering for months pulled against her decision. She tried to set herself on autopilot to complete the task, but she suddenly understood why she couldn't kill Bella.

Staring down at her from the landing, an expression of horrified satisfaction, Bella reminded her of a long lost friend: Anne, whom she once considered a sister, and come to think of it looked quite like Bella did. Mahogany hair and rosy complexion, though her body was more shapely while Bella's was wiry.

Though Victoria had done her best to stow the memory of Anne away to the darkest recesses of her mind, Bella triggered a distant memory.

That simmering look of triumph had been the same expression that beheld Anne the day they killed Master Holland. (More accurately, Anne killed him with an axe, while Victoria stood shivering in the far corner of the room.) While she had been meek and conflicted, Anne had not let the powerlessness of their situation stop her from ending his cruel rule of the estate. Just as Bella was trying to do. And against two vampires, no less.

One memory and Victoria transitioned from _must kill her_ to _can't kill her_. It was clear that she would never find herself capable of killing the human girl. Torturing her was one thing, but as violent as her fantasies had grown, she could never find a convincing reason to end her life.

She'd had every opportunity, and in every single one of them she had found herself postponing that end under the pretense of delayed gratification.

It was striking how quickly the memory had hit, how quickly it had eliminated the hatred she felt towards the human girl. As if she'd always known that Bella wasn't at fault. But the instinct to mourn, to seek revenge, had been so strong. And now that she found herself back at square one, without anyone at her side or the willingness to harm Bella, she was frightened by how aimless she felt.

Glancing over to Bella, the hollow outrage slammed through her whole body like a freight train.

Locked in her stare, the dark shine of Victoria's eyes frightened Bella. They were wild with conflict.

There was a pervasive _will she, won't she_ dilemma to Victoria's actions. Bella couldn't answer the question: was she friend or foe? And if Victoria was ever set on being the latter, could she trust Victoria to leave her and her friends alone?

A loud explosion, a blinding flare, and it was immediately apparent that the fire had grown beyond the stairwell. It consumed the walls and curtains and crept closer towards the Molotov cocktails in the kitchen. It would be seconds before the entire table was engulfed in flames and moments before the house was as well.

The smoke and fumes embittered the air.

Choking on her breath, Bella realized that she needed to get down to the first floor. But just how was she going to do that when the stairwell was obstructed and Victoria was waiting for her below?

Conflicted, Bella glanced between Victoria and the front door.

Victoria's lips twisted at the idea of helping her. Now at this pivotal moment, Victoria was certain that the right thing to do was to bring the girl down to safety and leave without ever returning to entertain her fascination with the girl. But there was still a residual grudge that stopped her from snapping into action.

Feeling the heat of the fire on her skin, Victoria decided not to put it off any longer and jumped into action. She leapt up to the second floor, reaching out to gather Bella in her arms and cart her out of the house, but as soon as Bella caught sight of the incoming figure she turned around and sprinted down the hall.

Landing on silent feet, Victoria huffed in exasperation. Her eyes thinned into dark jeweled slits as she stared at Bella's retreating form.

Within a second, she flitted across the hall, standing directly in Bella's path.

Bella recoiled as soon as she spotted her. Fighting off the sense of doom, she rushed over to the closest door, which turned out to lead into Alice and Jasper's bedroom.

The light color palette of the room usually soothed her, but in that moment Bella wanted to get out of the house, away from danger. Her eyes briefly glanced at the window. She quickly dismissed the idea and searched the room.

There was a full-length mirror hanging at one corner of the bedroom. Normally she'd walk by it, avoiding her reflection—though she could have turned it away at any time, she always chose to leave the room intact—as if it were a pariah. But in that moment she couldn't look away from the reflection.

Victoria was right behind her, her white hand reaching out to grasp her by the shoulder.

Bella whipped around—without a plan in mind, only the primitive need to not give the predator her back—and a sharp slap sent her falling to the floor.

Bella rubbed her cheek, staring up at Victoria with panicked eyes. The desire to run was still so strong that she tried scuttling away. Pushing herself backwards away from Victoria with her feet, she tried to pull herself up by the edge of the thick comforter of the grandiose bed.

But Victoria's arms wrapped themselves around her body, and Bella found herself swept off her feet.

Her arms instinctively wrapped themselves around Victoria's neck, and she pressed her face into her cool chest as if to close herself away from everything.

Victoria glanced down at the top of her head, shaking her own at the absurd creature in her arms. Running from her and then holding onto her the next second, what was going through the human's head?

Holding Bella firmly against her, she flashed out of the room and leapt down to the first floor, denting Edward's grand piano as she landed on top of it, before making her way over to the front patio.

She spotted whirring lights less than a mile away through the thick foliage that secluded the mansion from the main road, and she knew that she had to take her leave.

The house burned behind them, the flames whipping open the glass windows and engulfing the massive walls.

For a moment, Victoria held Bella more tightly against her, recalling her former fantasy of burning herself down with the house.

Bella was besides herself, as if only a part of her existed in this reality, and she had wrapped her hands tightly around Victoria's neck, nestling herself deeper into her arms, an unbridled need for comfort making her seek out the unyielding stone-like skin of her body. So similar to Edward's, and yet so different. Slimmer, with different divots and curves.

For the first time in a long, Bella felt almost at home. The cool temperature of Victoria's arms soothed her heated skin. It almost met her desires for the kind of physical affection that, up to this point, Edward had been the only one to provide.

Those little moments, lost in time, when things felt whole and blessed, that's what Bella missed most.

Victoria set her down on the steps and, peeling Bella's arms off of her, gazed perplexedly at her head, only mildly irritated by her humanity. "Hmph," she uttered.

Assured that Bella was safe, she left without another sound.

When Bella opened her eyes, she realized that she needed to get farther away from the house. She could still feel the heat emanating from the house fire.

She spotted her truck a few yards away on the Cullens' drive and stood up. Her knees buckled, disorientation messing with her equilibrium.

She staggered away jerkily, her knees juddering and her hand shaking. She made it a few steps out from the porch before she had to lean against a nearby tree and catch her breath. There were bright, blaring lights, red and blue, appearing just before her eyes, and she raised her arm over her face to ease the burning sensation beneath her eyelids.

With a terrible, detached clarity, she realized that the firetrucks were there, and probably Charlie, along with a whole team of police officers.

She felt lucid and wavy, as if all her nerves had been unstrung. The exertion, the fear and dread, the smoke; all of it had exhausted her and she wanted nothing more than to collapse on the spot.

She staggered forward, walking towards the flashing lights, but stopped abruptly when large hands wrapped around her shoulders.

The abruptness felt like a crash and she wavered backwards on her feet. But the hands were strong and managed to hold her up. She jerked her head back, the dark curtain of wayward hairs parting for her searching eyes.

Her eyelids clicked one, twice, and she realized that Charlie was staring back at her angrily.

She turned her head, as if to find Victoria, but she felt pressure on her jaw pulling her gaze away from the crumbling house.

He was speaking to her, but her attention was elsewhere. She felt him pull her over somewhere by her arms, which she realized were curled behind her back, but all she could think about was Victoria: _Is she still inside? They cannot see her. She'll kill them. I need to—._

She felt him push her into some place dark and confined, soft but hard.

Bella soon realized that she wasn't being pushed into a cotton-laden coffin, but into a place she'd only ever seen from the other side, foreboding in its quiet emptiness.

She was in the cop cruiser, and for once she was sitting opposite the partition cage.


	8. Woodstill

_Author's note: I'm so glad to be back with another chapter. I honestly wasn't sure I'd get this finished and out soon, but I managed to write some semblance of a chapter and am eager to post it. So if you see any mistakes or discrepancies, that's honestly because I don't want to leave this file collecting dust as it undoubtedly will if I delay any longer._

 _In any case, enjoy, and if you have the time, please review. It's been some time since I've last read one, and I'd love nothing more than to hear what you liked, disliked, what you'd like to see, and what you think will or won't happen in the story._

* * *

Chapter 8: Woodstill

When Bella was found she was wearing an expression of bewilderment, a jacket sliding haphazardly down one shoulder, streaks of blood on her clothes gleaming black under the strobe-light glare of the police sirens, the darkest of the stains across the inside of her left hand. She was uninjured except for some bruising on her arms and back, some minor abrasions across her hands, and an open wound across her palm that would have to be dressed for a few days to heal. Later analysis of the ashed remains of the house determined the cause of the fire to be gasoline, gallons of it, spilt from the second floor of the house. A breathalyzer had been conducted, revealing a 0.06 blood alcohol level, and met with a conceding nod. Of course she had been under the influence.

When the fire cleared, a small group of investigators tiptoed across the scorched remains of the foyer. Under their thick boots was broken glass littered about like festive decor, blackened clothe, caved-in wood breams. A narrative was easily formed: A young woman, grieving the loss of her boyfriend, confused by dual rejection and devotion, had started a fire with gasoline she had found in the garage, which was made larger by the drink she had left around and the candles and fire place that had been lit for warmth and light. But nobody dared voice it in front of Charlie. How he must feel to have to lay the law on his daughter. To admit to himself that she never stopped suffering, pining after an idealized romance, and that he was hopeless to fix it. Just as he had failed to see it.

He had been reticent to book her, especially when she was so clearly imprisoned by sorrow. But it was the constant pulls against his grip on her arms and the bloodshot eyes searching wildly about the room that did it.

~XXX~

Charlie speared a slice of steak and brought it too his stern mouth, his eyes staring unblinkingly at Bella. She could feel his laser glare, beaming red with suppressed anger, but she dutifully ignored it, her heart panging with sadness. He looked at her through the searching eyes of a police chief, not with the concern of a father.

She couldn't recollect everything that had happened after the fire, but she was appallingly aware of how bad things looked from the outside. She was surprised she didn't wake up strapped to a gurney with masked doctors pointing syringes at her. She knew that for Charlie, the house fire was a sign of dormant rage, and perhaps it was.

He stared at her bandaged hand now, painfully aware that he didn't know her as well as he'd thought. They hadn't discussed what had happened that night. He felt that while the damage was fresh it was best he didn't push Bella for details. Anything that would come out of her mouth was lies, weak platitudes meant to stop him from sending her on the earliest plane to Jacksonville, and that could sway him from helping her. The truth was that he didn't want to ruin her life with severe charges, as reasonable as they would be to place. It would be the opposite of moving forward.

The steak was bitter in his mouth.

Bella dragged a bite of steak across the juices collecting on the plate, her shoulders drawn defensively. She was prepared for it, she had already built an argument against leaving Forks and was ready to draw her own sword if he striked first. She tasted the words in her mouth. She couldn't leave Forks. She would have to make an effort to stay calm and collected. If she spoke defensively, she'd sound guilty.

Charlie leaned forward on the table, fork and knife suspended in the air. "It's probably best if you go to Jacksonville with your mother. Staying here isn't doing you any good." At this, Bella's mouth dropped open in protest, but Charlie wasn't done. "I've spoken with Renée. She would be glad to see you back."

"No, dad," she interjected.

"Excuse me?" A vein pulsated.

"I'm sure Renee wouldn't mind, but I can't impose on her and Phil when they've just had a baby. They should be able to focus on her. And I like the doctors and therapists over the clinic, they're already familiar with my case. Moving now would just complicate things."

He glanced down. Bella knew she'd won the first round but she was aware that there were things left to be said.

Charlie cleared his throat. "Things can't go on the way they have. Something's gotta change."

The knife paused in Bella's hand. She knew that he would feel this way, but she wasn't sure what she could offer that she hadn't done already. She had graduated with acceptable grades. She was sticking to her physical therapy regimen. She kept the house tidy. Work, though an option, would have to wait until she got the trembling under better control. College was out of the question. _Anything_ outside of Forks was out of the question. Victoria was still out there; Bella couldn't bring herself to leave Charlie. What if she attacked him next?

She stammered out an incoherent reply.

"Bella, I know things have been hard on you, and I'm sorry I can't do more to help with that, but you can't continue behaving so recklessly. Do you realize how serious it could've been? What it looked like?"

Bella winced. "I know."

"I don't think you do."

Bella shook her head. "No, I do. And I'm grateful. But it's not like I haven't been trying to do things right, trying to keep you from worrying—"

"Don't turn this on me. You should be trying for yourself, but you haven't. Instead, you lied to me about visiting your friends, even though you knew it wasn't safe to go out on your own, to get drunk inside an empty house with beer you had no business drinking. You burned their house down." His words were growing heated, a pointer finger jammed upon the table to accentuate them.

All she had gotten was a slap on the wrist. A single night in jail for what she'd receive months, if not years, of jail time in any town he wasn't chief. Trespassing, arson, fake IDs and underage drinking, lying to officers—he made sure it hadn't made it inside her file. It was the first time in his career that he had ever broken the rules for someone. There had never been any need to do such a thing, not in a town where everybody knew where the other had gone for lunch, for a shit, for anything.

It hadn't been difficult. None of the other officers could see Bella as a criminal. Though she had every reason to be vindictive of the Cullens, they'd all captured a glimpse of the girl, who was nothing short of studious and polite. That girl didn't have a criminal bone in her body.

"That house has been empty for almost a year, but it's obviously been lived in. So no, you haven't been trying."

Bella bit her lip, staring at her plate, afraid to look up and meet his eyes, defeated and puffy with stifled emotion and fatigue. She couldn't wrap her head around how quickly things had spiraled out of control—did the Cullens not anticipate Victoria seeking revenge?

Charlie stared at her for a beat longer. He sighed, deciding it was best to move on from this. He wanted to trust her, perhaps she'd try harder now. He quickly shoved another chunk of steak into his mouth. For a few minutes nothing but the scrape of knives and tentative chews could be heard.

"So," he began, quick to spear another slice, "what are you gonna do now that your hideout is gone?"

Bella was scratching her neck absent-mindedly; she forced herself to answer. She almost brought up Jessica and Angela, on instinct—they had long been her go-to for fake weekend plans—but cold realization set in as her mouth opened with familiar platitudes. Graduation had come and gone already so that even school was no longer a buffer. The Newton's had assured her she still had her job, that they'd always keep a spot for her, but that reassurance went unrealized. It just all seemed so far away to her.

"I'm gonna focus on getting better. Maybe go back to Newton's by the end of this month?

"Plus, I've been meaning to fix things up with Jake, but, um, he hasn't been answering my calls." That was a lie; the truth was that this time around he was the one badgering her with calls. She wanted nothing more than to avoid him.

"You haven't seen him since that first night in the hospital, right?"

"Has Billy said anything…to you…about him?" she asked, biting her lip worriedly. She glanced back down at her plate, stirring her food around with the fork.

Charlie huffed, and for an instant, Bella believed it's because she was evading the question. Her shoulders squared defensively.

"Billy won't say shit," he grumbled.

Her shoulders relaxed, her eyebrows raising in surprise. He must really be upset. He usually refrained from cursing in front of her, as if she were still an impressionable little girl to him.

"Well, Jake tried apologizing, but I don't think we can fix things between us. He's changed ever since he started hanging around Sam. I just want to end things on a better note, I guess."

"Wait, I thought you said you wanted to fix things with him. I don't think you should give up on him, Bells. He was there for you when you were down."

Bella's answer came out a whisper. "I don't owe him anything, Dad. He pushed me away first. That fight we had just revealed that we couldn't continue as we were. He wants more from me, but that's just not possible."

"More?"

"Yes," she sighed.

"I guess that's fair. I just hate to think about you being alone. Even before, you know," he caved, his voice drifting off.

"I'm just taking it one day at a time, Charlie." A pause as Bella deliberated whether or not there was something else that needed to be said. "I never meant to burn their house."

"I know you didn't," he said, despite himself, feeling that while there were many things left in question, the core of Bella's heart wasn't.

"But maybe, if drinking has become an issue, you should see—"

"Whoa, Dad, I'm not an alcoholic."

"I know it's not as if you've been coming back here drunk, and I never had to worry about you keeping up with school or work or—"

"They weren't for me."

"Then who the hell were they for, Bella?"

"My friends," she answered, though it sounded like a question. "For parties, you know, that's where I stored it all."

Silence fell on the table, and for a few seconds it seemed their hands had also been stunned into inaction. He murmed something about names, but Bella couldn't be sure.

"Your food's getting cold," he murmured gruffly.

And with that, they resumed eating. The scraping of the knives and the loud chews proof that things were still okay between them. When their plates were emptied, the air of distrust had somewhat lifted. Bella washed the dishes while Charlie towel-dried them and stored them away.

As she rinsed the sink clean of suds, Charlie hovered beside her, swiping dry the same plate for the last whole minute. She glanced at him briefly, cautious and amused.

He cleared his throat. "I've gotta work tomorrow, but maybe Sunday we could, I don't know, check out the mall that just opened in town," he began, struggling for words.

Bella chuckled, a bit too forcefully. "Don't strain yourself, Dad. Shopping? Pricey food?" She shook her head. She wanted to say: _That's not you, and neither is it me._ But instead she decided to show that she was open to spending time with him, as if she didn't realize that he was only offering this now just to keep an eye on her. "Rain check?"

He smiled, looking away from her attentive eyes. "Sure."

He finally placed the plate on the rack and laid out the towel on the counter to dry.

"Um, night, Dad."

"Night, Bells."

He watched silently as Bella bounded up the stairs to her room, his arms crossed and a single shake of his head.

Once in her room, Bella found herself pacing alongside her bed, her hand grasping fruitlessly at the air as she tried to decide whether or not to call Jake.

She wanted to confront him. He clearly knew far more about the vampires that were terrorizing her than he could let on. He'd said that he could help, but was that even possible?

He didn't have a cell, so there was a good chance that Billy would be the one to pick up the phone this time of the evening. He was probably in front of the TV beside the table with dinner, just a few feet away from the dull yellow phone on the wall.

When she picked up the phone, muttering at herself to just do it, rip off the band-aid, all she got was ringing and a clipped automated message to leave a message. She eagerly swiped the red button.

Pulling herself under the covers, she searched through her memories, trying to figure out why Jake had been so cryptic, why he was simultaneously eager to maintain his secret and provide full disclosure. The last time she'd pursued a mystery, her heart, having bloomed wondrously in the twilight, had been left broken. She wasn't sure she should try to investigate as he clearly hoped she would, even if Jacob was like a brother to her.

And there were more pressing matters to worry about. Even in the dark, Bella found herself staring towards the window, watching the tree branches sway and quiver with the wind, waiting for an hovering shadow, a snapping tree limb.

Eventually, she succumbed to sleep, dreaming of a smooth embrace and carnal red eyes.

~XXX~

Bella huffed in frustration, barely suppressing the urge to slam her hands against the steering wheel, knowing full well that all she'd achieve was a nasty bruise. She knew that she'd have to be lucky to get her job back after all those months in limbo, and she was about as lucky as cattle raised for slaughter. She wasn't angry at the Newtons. How could she be, really? But just what was she gonna tell Charlie? She was desperate to convince him that she was getting better, that she was getting her life in order. She needed that fucking job, damn it!

She was driving fast, pushing the truck to its limits, though it could barely take 5 miles above the speed limit. Main Street was mostly empty, so she could afford to do this. The risk of seizure wasn't as dire as it used to be almost a year ago, so she was allowed to drive again. Still she couldn't shake off the feeling she was doing something dangerous, reckless. More pertinent than this feeling was her desire to drive anywhere but home. Passing the new mall, the small locally-owned shops advertising sales, and the endless walls of green, Bella desired nothing more than to escape the dreary, sleepy town, where she was pitied, suspected, gawked at, distrusted...

Until Bella registered a flash of red hair. She pressed the breaks suddenly, the tires squealing as she spun the wheel into a tight U-turn, riding on sheer adrenaline, and drove to where she thought she had spotted Victoria, atop a set of old stairs.

She found herself pulling onto the gravel parking lot of a modest inn, slightly rusty along the outside rails and a bit water-damaged around the edge but still pleasantly quaint. It wasn't a sinister place, but the possibility of meeting Victoria there made the motel feel as if it were. The crunch of her tires on the gravel made Bella cringe, as if she were announcing her presence, and she wasn't quite sure yet that she had good reason to be there.

Staring up at the dingy balcony she could find no one in sight. Only then did she catch notice of the sign: Woodstill Inn. Bella surveyed the place again with her eyes. Had Victoria actually been telling the truth when she told Charlie she was staying at a motel in town? What were the odds? Weren't the Cullens the only vampires to do such a thing?

Bella stepped out of her truck, and before she could talk herself out of it she walked up the single flight of stairs. She stopped at the top, wondering where Victoria could have gone. Where did she go? Here by 201 or over at 210? she wondered, tapping her chin with her thumb and forefinger.

Bella stood between those doors, her feet undecided about which way to move.

"I see you have a death wish," came a sweet voice behind her.

"Victoria," she gasped, whirling around in surprise. Although disturbed at being caught unawares, Bella was more concerned with the relief that laced her tone. She froze, realizing she had subconsciously taken a few steps towards Victoria at the sound of her voice.

Victoria stood beside a column, her arms crossed around her middle in a way that seemed relaxed, though her stare was stricter, full of malicious intent.  
"You seem to think that I'm no longer the enemy."  
Victoria took a small step forward, smirking at Bella's matched retreat.

"You'd be making a mistake."

Bella's eyes flitted around the balcony, to the cars parked down below, where a lone man drank in a leisurely manner from his street-facing chair. He glanced briefly up at them. When Victoria made no motion to attack, Bella felt compelled to explain herself.

"I saw you as I was driving by. Well, I—I wasn't sure it was you. I thought you might've left some time ago after you—saved—me." Saved seemed too strong of a word to describe what Victoria had done for her. Yet hadn't that been precisely what she'd achieved, distracting Laurent long enough for Bella to light the gasoline she'd poured and then pulling her from that same fire when she found herself inadvertently trapped behind its infernal walls?

The question brought forth a sense of déjà-vu. Hadn't she also demanded the truth from Edward, about why he'd risked his secret to stop the van that threatened to turn her into a blueberry pancake?  
"You think I helped you?" Victoria questioned, smirking as if the idea astonished her. Bella stood still, internally musing about Victoria's deflection and somewhat pleased that she hadn't denied it outright.

"What else would you call it?"

"Convenient. I had wanted to rid myself of Laurent for a while. Your foolishness simply prompted too good an opportunity to miss."

"What about your other plans?"

"Such as?"

"Killing me."

"Torturing you, more like, and by the looks of it, I'm succeeding. Aren't I?"

Bella didn't answer, glaring down at the floor to ignore Victoria's intense, red stare.

"Why don't you come inside?" Victoria offered, flashing over to Bella's side and placing a cold hand on her shoulder to assure her there was no other option. Inclining her head slightly to the side, Victoria was briefly distracted by how small the human appeared under her grasp. She tightened her grip to combat the invasive thought.

Bella didn't have a plan in mind, not even a firm grasp on her opinion of Victoria, who seemed to be shifting between two roles, both friend and foe, and yet neither. She wasn't sure which she hoped for, but it felt important to firmly establish their relationship, the ramifications of it, instead of drifting as she had since that night. Even long before then.

So it was decided. Bella would follow her in, even if it meant the end of her.


End file.
